SETTLEMENTS ON THE DEMERARY, &C. 319 



tribute at the custom-house, without making treaties of com- 

 merce in behalf of favoured nations, or excluding hereditary 

 foes from the market of general competition, every thing 

 would be grown where it can be produced cheapest, manu- 

 factured where the labor of men or of machines can be ap- 

 plied with the greatest advantage, and brought at the expe- 

 dient season, to the home of the consumer, with the smallest 

 possible burden of expense and of profit. Among the parts of 

 an extensive empire, this desirable equality of privilege usually 

 prevails. The several provinces mostly enjoy one with ano- 

 ther this equitable reciprocity of intercourse. In the different 

 districts belonging to the same sovereign, there is seldom 

 much locality of privilege. Industry is left to its natural walk 

 and prosperity to its natural seat. Great Britain is content 

 alike to take her sugar and cochineal, her cotton and indigo, 

 from Bengal or from Stabroek. If an inequality of privilege 

 in some respects prevails, it is rather in her export than in her 

 import trade, and it is rather the East than the West Indies, 

 which have cause for complaint. But the inconvenience of 

 chartered companies and of legalized monopolies is become so 

 apparent from the more rapid progress of West Indian than of 

 East Indian commerce, that even these distinctions will no 

 doubt soon incur abolition; and an universal toleration of pri- 

 vate judgment in purchasing, and of the appropriate industry 

 of each colony, will supersede the patronized establishments 

 of a darker age. 



c c c 2 



