WEST INDIES. 
CHAP. IV.] 
257 
been happily fitted, as well from internal circum¬ 
stances, as her commodious situation; and it is to 
a neighbourly intercourse with that continent, con¬ 
tinued during one hundred and thirty years, that 
our sugar plantations in a great measure owe their 
prosperity; insomuch that, according to the opini¬ 
on of a very competent judge,* if the continent 
had been wholly in the hands of a foreign power, 
and the English precluded from all commerce or 
intercourse with it, it is a very doubtful point, 
whether, in such case, we should at this hour 
have possessed a single acre of land in the West 
Indies. 
The following is an official account of the total 
import from North America into the British West 
Indian islands for the years 1771, 1772, and 1773, 
attested by Mr. Stanly, secretary to the commissi¬ 
oners of the customs in London, dated the 15th 
March, 1775. 
* Mr, Long, 
K 
V oh III. 
