522 The Extraction of Sugar from the [September, 
the planter ; he could not produce the sugar for that sum ; 
and matters are said to be still worse in Demerara and 
Trinidad. 
A general abandonment of sugar cultivation must there- 
fore take place in these colonies if the present prices for 
cane sugar continue to last much longer, and if no remedy 
can be devised. And it is upon the success of the sugar 
industry that our West India colonies mainly depend, both 
for the employment of their population and the collection of 
their revenue. In 1879 the abandonment of estates had 
begun; in Jamaica alone, in that year, thirty-six estates 
were advertised for sale without finding buyers, and pne 
estate — for which £ 12,000 had been offered a short time 
before — was then being abandoned.* 
I have already stated that the beet-root sugar manufac- 
turer extracts his sugar under more favourable conditions 
than the cane sugar manufacturer has hitherto possessed ; 
the advantages I alluded to do not include the bounty 
system, but are what may be termed local and natural ad- 
vantages : they were pretty fully described by Liebig, viz., 
superior processes employed in the manufacture, a climate 
more advantageous for the working up of the juice, and more 
intelligence engaged in directing the operations. These ad- 
vantages, with the exception of climate, need not, as I shall 
show, continue ; and the advantages of climate may be 
greatly minimised. 
The advantages the cane sugar manufacturer possesses 
over the beet-root sugar manufacturer are much more 
important, for he operates upon a juice much richer in sugar 
and containing a much less quantity of impurities, as will 
be seen by the following analyses. The analyses must of 
course be viewed as only approximative, but that will not 
materially alter the relative proportions both of the sugar 
and the impurities. 
Peligot found the juice of the Otaheite cane from Mar- 
tinique contained the following percentage of the different 
substances named : — 
* Superadded to the disadvantages our colonial planters experience in the 
English markets, they now experience very similar disadvantages in the 
markets of the United States, for Spain can now introduce the sugar manu- 
factured in her plantations into the United States on better terms than can be 
obtained for the sugar manufactured in our own colonies : she has procured 
from the United States the most favoured-nation treaty for her colonies, 
including slave-growing Cuba, whilst our Foreign Secretary, Lord Granville, 
states that it is impossible for Great Britain to obtain like treatment for Her 
Majesty’s West India colonies. 
