no 
HISTORY OF THE [book, v, 
manufacture once destroyed, scarce ever takes root 
again in the same country. Of the causes from 
which the general culture and manufacture .of indi¬ 
go, was relinquished in Jamaica, enough has been 
said by other writers: yet the same arguments 
which induced the British government to burthen 
this commodity with duties under which it sunk, 
are still urged in the case of other colonial pro¬ 
ducts, and will continue to be urged, until the 
same fate attends many of them as attended indigo. 
Of the monstrous folly and impolicy of loading 
with high duties an article so essentially necessary 
to the British woolen manufactory, (putting colonial 
considerations out of the question) the mother coun¬ 
try is, I believe, at length sufficiently convinced, the 
quantity of indigo annually imported into Great 
Britain, from all parts of the world, being, I be¬ 
lieve, one million and a half of pounds, of which 
five parts in seven are purchased with ready money 
of strangers and rivals!* 
* Soon after the second edition of this work was printed, my learn¬ 
ed friend, Dr. Edward Bancroft. F.R. S. favoured the public with 
his “ Expeiimental Researches concerning the Philosophy of Perma- 
“ nent Colours,” a work of infinite research and merit; in an Appen¬ 
dix to which, he gives an abstract of a botanical description, by Dr. 
Roxburgh of Bengal, of a new species of nerium (rose bay) found in 
the East Indies, the leaves of which yield excellent indigo. This ac¬ 
count, however, is chiefly interesting to the planters of the West In¬ 
dies, as containing some experiments and opinions which lead to an 
improved method of extrac ing the common indigo by means of a boil¬ 
ing process-, for it being found that the leaves of the nerium would not 
yield their colour except to boiling water, it was judged by analogy, 
that the scalding process might be advantageously applied also to the 
