Political Economy. 129 
If all the West-India islands belonged to one sovereign, and 
he should, miraculously, happen to be a wise man — can it be for 
one moment conceived that he would attempt to increase his pow- 
er, and promote the prosperity, and wealth of his subjects by cau- 
sing them to raise sugar, coffee, and the other productions, pecu- 
liar to those climates, only in sufficient quantity for their own 
consumption, and to procure sparingly, imperfectly, at a vast ex- 
pence of labour and time, or totally to forego those enjoyments, 
and that wealth, which attention to the productions most favoured 
by their tropical situation, and their unrestrained exportation 
would procure to them in abundance, and with ease 
The condition of France cannot be thought to have improved, 
because she is obliged, in compliance with Napoleon’s mandates, 
to extort from a crop of five acres cultivated in beets, as much in- 
different sugar as the wheat of one acre would procure from a- 
broad of an excellent quality.! 
We have hardly, in our wealthy country, a sufficient quantity 
of rags to supply us with paper. But Italy could not consume the 
paper which her inexhaustible rags, were she to work them up 
herself, would bring into existence. She exchanges them for 
West-India produce and hard ware. She does the same with the 
alum, the sulphur, the puzzolanal of her burning mountains. 
All my readers probably know, that the current of opinion among the lite- 
rati of England, and especially of the reviewers, such as the Edinburgh, and 
the Monthly, is opposed to the prevailing madness for foreign commerce. The 
Edinburgh Review moreover, conducted with much ability, is generally in 
opposition to the present politics of the British government. To countei’act 
the effect of the disquisitions in that review, the Quarterly Review was set on 
foot, as a general defence of the measures of government in church and state. 
Yet even the Quarterly Review, is struck with the manifold misery of which a 
dependance on foreign commerce is at one time or other the inevitable cause. 
I will put in a noie to the end of this paper, the extract to which I allude. 
* No. I am a fixt advocate for raising every thing that can be sold or bar- 
tered with profit. I greatly approve of unrestrained exportation. Let the 
merchant carry what he pleases, where he pleases, at his o-wn risk. If his 
trade be hazardous, it is his own affair : it is his duly to sit down and count 
the cost : he has no claim upon the nation to take the hazard upon itself. 
T. C. 
! But sugar sells in France for 15 sous. The dollar passes for 108 sous. 
That is about 7ibs. for a dollar. T. C. 
t The Puzzolana or Terras, is hardly now an r.rticle of export : its use is su- 
perceded by the admixture of Smithy-slack and the cheap oxyds of iron with 
mortar, T. C, 
Vol. IL 
R 
