408 TRINIDAD. 



duce. The facilities of communication by railways, may now 

 bring the article within reach of the most remote parts of Europe. 

 Increase of consumption without a proportionate increase of pro- 

 duction, must diminish the stock in the different markets of the 

 world ; and then will result a reactive rise in price, necessarily 

 followed by a remunerative production in cultivation. 2ndly The 

 scarcity of bread-stuff in Europe, of late years, has caused an 

 importation of rice and corn ; and these articles will probably be 

 cultivated in tropical Asia and America their native lands as 

 objects of export. The disease of the vine, and the increasing 

 demands of commerce, will also tend to increase the distillation of 

 rum. 3rdly The dangers attending the indiscriminate encourage- 

 ment of an unlimited competition in the production of essential 

 articles of commerce, begin, I believe, to be clearly demonstrated 

 in the actual state of the cotton market. The people of the 

 United States, being in a position to produce cotton cheaper than 

 any other nation, have, de facto, obtained the monopoly of the 

 cotton markets of the world ; arid it is now felt that they begin to 

 exercise an undue influence on the welfare of Europe, and of 

 Great Britain in particular. What becomes of the great manu- 

 facturing interests of England and Scotland, without the cotton of 

 the south ? England will do nothing to save her sinking colonies, 

 but she will do almost any thing to court the good will of the 

 Americans. I therefore consider, as a natural consequence of the 

 low price of sugar, and the anomalous state of the cotton market, 

 that the production of cotton will be encouraged in Brazil and in 

 Asia, to a greater extent than that of sugar. Trinidad cacao had 

 acquired at one time a deserved reputation in the markets of 

 Spain and France ; but, as already stated, frauds on the part of 

 the merchants, and the encouragement given to the production of 

 an inferior article for the British markets, have reduced our 

 cacao to its present depreciation. The lesson ought not to be 

 lost to the sugar planter. Now, to redeem the lost reputation of 

 the Trinidad cacao, the best kinds ought to be selected for plant- 

 ing, and the article be cured for the French and Spanish markets, 

 where it will both fetch a better price, and also will never be 

 subject to the heavy fluctuations which occur almost monthly, in 

 the home market. 



I have, I believe, fully exposed, and satisfactorily proved, the 



