WEST INDIES. 
CHAP. V.] 
301 
high or low, the nation at large is not one shilling 
the richer nor the poorer on that account. But, of 
whatever is consumed at home, the value is saved, 
and of whatever is exported abroad, and paid for by 
foreigners, the amount is so much clear gain to the 
kingdom.* 
Neither ought the national profits arising frorr 
their cultivation, to be estimated, in any degree, by 
the profits which are made by the several individual 
cultivators. The income which the nation derives 
from her sugar plantations, comprehends the whole 
of their produce. The income of the cultivators 
consists only of the very small proportion of that 
produce which is left to them, after paying duties 
to government, freights and commissions to the 
British merchants, and the interest of their debts to 
British creditors. It is indeed very possible that a 
concern may be lucrative to the public, which is 
ruinous to the individual. That the nation has been 
benefited in ten thousand ways from her plantations 
* It is the practice with some writers, in treating of foreign com¬ 
merce, to consider every branch of it as unfavourable to the nation, 
in which the imports are of greater value than the exports; that is, 
they strike a balance, on the custom-house entries, and consider the 
excess either way, as the measure of the national advantages, or disad¬ 
vantages of such a trade. Perhaps the application of this rule to most 
branches of foreign commerce (rightly So called) is not improper; and 
it will extend, I am afraid, in a great degree, to our trade with the 
East Indies ; but from what has been said in the text, the reader will 
perceive the gross absurdity of bringing our intercourse with the West 
Indies to the same standard ; and that our import from, and not ex¬ 
port to them, is to be considered as the measure of their value. 
