50 TIMEHRI. 
possessors there were upwards of four hundred planta- 
tions exclusively planted in cotton. Innumerable acts 
were promulgated for the security of the Cotton Colo- 
nies, and injun&tions without number were issued for 
the preservation of that cultivation so essential to the 
welfare of the nation. But it does not always happen 
that Statesmen accomplish what they intend todo. In 
this instance, like GULLIVER shewing his agility, they 
have most foully bewrayed themselves, for by their 
measures for the proteétion of the cotton cultivation, 
they have reduced it from 400 estates to less than ten, 
and thrown the trade entirely into the hands of Brazil 
and America. 
At the period of the abolition of the slave trade, sugar, 
which was coming into general cultivation here, gave so 
much superior a return to the other staples, that the cotton 
proprietors either changed their cultivation or sold to 
sugar estates. The British Government not only paid no 
attention to this abandonment of one of its grand colonial 
interests, the cotton, but allowed foreign Powers to 
carry on the slave trade for many years without a check, 
and as it required only one year to make the Guinea 
negro a returnable cotton labourer, Brazil and America 
in an instant sprung into the exclusive supply of the 
cotton market, and as the slave trade was still open to 
them, though closed to us, they could procure negroes 
at £30 or £40 per head, for that cultivation, whereas 
the British planter was obliged to pay £100. Immediate- 
ly on the heels of this absurdity came the order to pre- 
vent negroes being removed from one Colony to another. 
This again doubled the value of the Demerary negro and 
rendered his employment in any other cultivation but 
