AGRICULTURE IN 1829. 47 
tains in the colonial market foreign powers, who de- 
rive all the benefit which would otherwise accrue to 
Great Britain, should she merely allow her Colonies 
in South America a just and equitable means of com- 
petition. It would then be seen that the level coast 
of Guiana, with its inexhaustible soil, its perfeét 
system of water carriage, its peculiar appropriate cli- 
mate, and its never failing crop, with merely the 
privilege of introducing the unprofitable and surplus 
slave population of the Old Colonies and thus reduce 
the price of labour within reasonable bounds; with this 
privilege, under every difficulty of the times, and giving 
to other powers even the advantage of continuing the 
Slave Trade, it must drive them out ofthe sugar market, for 
it could produce that article at a lower rate than is possible 
to be produced elsewhere, under any circumstances. 
The knowledge of this fa€t occasions a jealousy in the 
old Colonies, from a dread of a consequent diminution of 
their political importance. They therefore oppose the 
measure of a transfer of labourers without considering 
that a removal of their capital to these shores is a dire& 
means of enriching themselves and the mother country 
at the same time, and they allow local attachment to 
supersede a direét public and private benefit. For, 
allowing Guiana to become the great sugar emporium, 
for which it is so pre-eminently calculated, the Islands 
are yet eligible for all the other objects of Colonial cul- 
tivation which of necessity would be superseded here 
and the amount of their produ€tion would be little 
affe&ted, though tbe description of it would be changed. 
No political considerations can effe@tually supersede the 
operations of natural eligibilities. 
