AGRICULTURE IN 1820. 45 
an. absolute saving in the end, as the inexhaustible nature 
of the soil would otherwise wear out two or three sets of 
temporary edifices, at an equal or greater expense than 
one permanent one, besides the trouble and time lost by 
repeated re-ere¢tions. 
In faét though the common and avowed sentiment of 
the Demerarians is the mere provision for the moment, 
all the labours and speculation of man are on a scale of 
magnitude to endure and be realized in ages to come. 
To such a nicety is the return of capital calculated, 
that three proprietorships will scarcely pull through one 
speculation, and the merchant’s capital once engaged, is 
inextricable for a century. There is also as much of that 
capital advanced on a population of 70,000 slaves in 
Demerary as on 180,000 anywhere else. 
It is a circumstance which gives rise to a most perni- 
cious feeling of jealonsy with what are called the old 
Colonies, and which is seized upon as a pretext, to saddle 
the Demerary planter with disabilities, unknown to the 
Islands (the folly of which is only equal to its injustice) 
that whereas the bounty of Providence has placed be- 
tween the confluence of the Amazon and the Oronoque 
a belt of alluvion, capable of furnishing with one-third 
the expense and labour of any other traét in the known 
world, enough of every description of colonial produce 
to supply all the market in Europe, and that in this dis- 
tri€t every million of British capital is capable, if only 
subje€ted to the common restri€tions of other Colonies, 
of producing more than double what it does in other 
situations. The British Government wilfully throws 
away the opportunity it thus possesses of underselling 
every other Power in the Colonial market, and purposely 
