2 9 S HISTORY OF THE [book vi. 
prices in the foreign market:—a policy, which is 
pronounced to be dangerous and destructive. 
The inference which is drawn from these pre¬ 
mises is plainly this, that, considering the expense 
of protecting them in war, the settlement of sugar 
plantations in the West Indies was improvident and 
unwise; and that their further extension and im¬ 
provement would not promote the general interests 
of the British empire. 
It is probable that these, and similar notions of 
the same tendency, but of more extensive applica¬ 
tion, were originally disseminated with no other 
view, than, by depreciating the value and impor¬ 
tance of all colonial settlements, to reconcile the 
nation to those rash and inconsiderate proceedings, 
which terminated in the loss of America. They 
have had their day ; and, like other speculations and 
endeavours as vain and ineffectual, might have been 
consigned, without injury, to oblivion. As, how¬ 
ever, the manifest aim of such doctrines is to induce 
the legislature to adopt measures that in their con¬ 
sequences may check and impede the further pro¬ 
gress of the colonists in a line of cultivation, in 
which, under the express encouragement of go¬ 
vernment, they have already embarked their for¬ 
tunes, and applied their faculties, it becomes ne¬ 
cessary, in a work of this kind, to consider them 
with some degree of attention. 
