53 i HISTORY OF THE [book vi, 
3 dly. The value of the Sugar Islands considered 
as so much British capital. 
4 thly. A state of the shipping and seamen to 
which the British Sugar Islands afford employment. 
A full enumeration of the various articles which 
furnish the ships bound to the West Indies with 
an outward freight, would indeed comprise a con¬ 
siderable proportion of almost all the productions 
and manufactures of this kingdom, as well as of 
many of the commodities imported into Great Bri¬ 
tain from the rest of Europe and the East Indies. 
The inhabitants of the Sugar Islands are wholly de¬ 
pendant on the mother-country and Ireland, not 
only for the comforts and elegancies, but also for 
the common necessaries of life. In most other 
states and kingdoms, the first object of agriculture 
is to raise food for the support of the inhabitants; 
but many of the rich productions of the West In¬ 
dies yield a profit so much beyond what can be ob¬ 
tained from grain, that in several of the Sugar 
Islands, it is true oeconomy in the planter, rather 
to buy provisions from others, than to raise them 
by his own labour. The produce of a single acre 
of his cane fields, will purchase more Indian corn 
than can be raised in five times that extent of land, 
and pay besides the freight from other countries. 
Thus not only their household furniture, their im¬ 
plements of husbandry, their clothing, but even a 
great part of their daily sustenance, are regularly 
sent to them from America or Europe. On the 
