a S e HISTORY OF THE [book vi. 
tions (as they affected the sugar islands) which go¬ 
vernment afterwards thought proper to adopt con¬ 
cerning it, in consequence of the acknowledgment 
of American independency: after which, I shall 
endeavour to furnish an account of the present 
state of the West Indian trade, both with the 
United States and the continental colonies yet re¬ 
maining to Great Britain. 
It may, I think, be affirmed, without hazard of 
contradiction, that if ever there was any one par¬ 
ticular branch of commerce in the world, that call¬ 
ed less for restraint and limitation than any other, 
it was the trade which, previous to the year 1774, 
was carried on between the planters of the West 
Indies and the inhabitants of North America. It 
, was not a traffic calculated to answer the fantastic 
calls of vanity, or to administer gratification to lux¬ 
ury or vice; but to procure food for the hungry, 
and to furnish materials (scarce less important than 
food) for supplying the planters in two capital ob¬ 
jects, their buildings, and packages for their chief 
staple productions, sugar, and rum. Of the ne¬ 
cessity they were under on the latter account, an 
idea may be formed from the statement in the pre¬ 
ceding chapter of the importation of those commo¬ 
dities into Great Britain; the cultivation of which 
must absolutely have stopped without the means of 
conveying them to market. 
For the supply of those essential articles, lum¬ 
ber, fish, flour, and grain, America seems to have 
