WEST INDIES. 
CHAP. III.] 
243 
surance homewards, commissions on the sale, and 
a long train of other charges. The balance, re¬ 
duced, as it necessarily must be, by such a multi¬ 
plicity of claims and deductions, to a very small 
proportion of the gross returns, is paid over to the 
planters, their agents, mortgagees, or annuitants, 
most of whom are resident in Great Britain, and 
by whom it is partly employed in extending culti¬ 
vation in the West Indies, and partly expended or 
invested in the mother country; in the one ease 
giving vigour to industry, in the other upholding 
the price of British lands, or the credit of the Bri¬ 
tish funds. With great truth, therefore, did the 
merchants and planters declare to the house of 
commons, “ that the sugar colonies, and the com¬ 
merce thereon dependent, have become the most 
considerable source of navigation and national 
wealth out of the limits of the mother country; 
and that no part of the national property can be 
more beneficially employed for the public, nor are 
any interests better entitled to the protection of 
the legislature, than theirs.”* 
* The following are the particulars of freight and insurance home¬ 
wards, commissions, &c. as enumerated in the valuable chain of evi¬ 
dence by George Hibbert, Esquire, before referred to, viz. 
Received by the ship owners, for freight home- £. 
wards, about.560,000 
Underwriters, for insurance ..... . 150,000 
British merchants and brokers, for commissi¬ 
ons, See. ..232,000 
Wharfingers, See. including primage . . . 95,000 
Total £.1,037,000 
