RESTRICTIONS ON COMMERCE. 



101 



terially increased the expense of managing estates, by in- 

 creasing the price of the necessaries of life ; and yet, as 

 you have remarked, the West Indians are now clamorous 

 for similar duties, by which the price of their productions 

 will be enhanced in the British market, thus entailing pri- 

 vation upon the community which consumes them. 



With an immense extent of sea-board abounding with fish, 

 which the fisherman could take in his boat, and which his 

 family could daily cure on the shore, they were certainly 

 in a position advantageously to compete with the Ameri- 

 can, who, from Cape Cod and Marblehead, found his way 

 through the Gut of Canso to the Gulf of St. Lawrence 

 and the Straits of Bell Isle, and who, after salting down 

 his fish in the hold, had to return with it to his distant 

 home, and cure it there. Yet with all these obstructions, 

 the Americans, in consequence of the supineness and inert- 

 ness of the colonists, could easily have undersold them in 

 their own markets, had they been allowed to frequent 

 them. 



And, while the West India planter became embarrassed 

 by the high prices he paid for the necessaries of life, those 

 whom the protective system was intended to benefit, derived 

 no advantage from its operation ; fish being at a low rate 

 at the places whither the fisherman repaired to dispose of 

 his catch, owing to the uncertainty that attended every 

 shipment which was made, caused by the frequent and 

 ruinous fluctuations in the West India market ; while the 

 merchant, on the other hand, was often ruined by the losing 

 voyages of his vessels. In fact, the West India trade was 

 a sort of lottery, in which there were a great many blanks 



