123 
GHAP. IV.] WEST INDIES. 
conclude the subject by offering a short estimate of 
the expenses and returns attending its culture, 
which I conceive tends more to the encouragement 
of industry, and of course to the increase of white 
population in the West Indian islands, than that of 
any other of their staple commodities; its produce 
being more equal and certain than that of any plant 
in cultivation, and its average profits more conside¬ 
rable in proportion to the capital employed. 
It will be urged, perhaps, that if such were the 
fact, its culture would have been more general in 
the British West Indies. This objection has been 
anticipated and answered by what has been related 
of the heavy excise duties on this commodity in 
Great Britain previous to 1783. To say (as is 
commonly said in the case of all duties on goods 
imported) that they fall on the consumer, and not 
on the planter, proves nothing; for if the price, in 
consequence of the duties, becomes so high as 
that the consumer ceases to purchase, the effect 
is equally ruinous to the cultivator, as if they fell 
immediately on himself. Nothing more clearly de¬ 
monstrates that the cultivation of this article was 
greatly affected by the British duties, than the 
comparative quantities imported into France and 
England; the whole annual import into Great Bri¬ 
tain, on an average of five years (1783 to 1787), 
not exceeding five million six hundred thousand 
pounds weight; whereas the island of Hispaniola 
alone has produced an annual supply of seventy 
million of pounds and upwards. 
