138 



COMMERCE. 



add new charges, which occasion an inevitable loss in the 

 sale. 



We will suppose, for instance, a moderate trajffic in sugar 

 and cotton, such as has been already established in wool. 

 The consumption of the former of these articles exceeds, in 

 Spain, a hundred and twenty thousand quintals, of which 

 Madrid expends between thirteen and fourteen thousand in 

 chocolate, sweetmeats, and sirops. This produ6lion might 

 be easily augmented in Peru, and would be certain of finding 

 a sale in the mother country, which is under the necessity of 

 making large purchases in foreign markets. Without enter- 

 ing, however, into a serious refutation of the supposed advan- 

 tages its cultivation presents over that of any other produdlion, 

 and which have been so highly extolled by a modern writer, 

 the Abbe Raynal, we will confine ourselves to a comparison 

 between what might be undertaken, and what has already 

 been effe6led by the Spanish and foreign establishments, to de- 

 monstrate the loss which the colony of Peru would sustain, on 

 account of its greater distance, in the very produ6lion by 

 which other colonies gain. 



In the space of five years, commencing with 1748, a hun- 

 dred and seventy thousand eight hundred quintals of moist 

 sugars were exported from the Havannah, at which island the 

 prime cost was five piastres six reals per quintal, and that of 

 the freightage and duties, three piastres. The sale in the 

 mother country amounted to nine piastres two reals ; and, 

 consequently, the importers gained a clear profit of four reals 

 per quintal, or of eighty-five thousand four hundred piastres 

 on the complete sum of the importations. 



* The 



