WEST INDIES 
CHAP. V.] 
303 
of raw and refined sugar, for the supply of foreign 
markets; it being evident, that foreigners would 
riot resort to our market for the purchase of a com¬ 
modity, which they might buy cheaper at home :* 
Nor do I recollect when it was otherwise. There 
was indeed a time when England, having no plan¬ 
tations of her own, was compelled to purchase of 
foreign nations, and at their own prices many arti¬ 
cles of prime necessity, for a supply of which, those 
very nations now resort to the British market. 
* Respecting the French sugar islands, I can speak of my own 
knowledge. Most of their largest planters having adopted the prac¬ 
tice of claying , they pay less attention to the manufacture of good 
muscovado than is given to it in our islands. This latter therefore, 
being generally of inferior quality, may be sold proportionably cheap¬ 
er than ours ; but whenever it is of equal goodness, the price also is 
equal, and sometimes higher. Of twelve samples of muscovado sugar 
produced to me in Saint Domingo, as of the best quality of sucre brut 
made in that island, I could not honestly pronounce that any one was 
well manufactured j and I am persuaded I could have purchased better 
sugars in Jamaica at a less price than was asked for those. This was 
in 1791, soon after the revolt of the slaves, when it might have been 
supposed that the distresses of the French planters would have com¬ 
pelled them to sell their sugars more reasonably than they had done for 
several years before. In fact, the only datum for ascertaining the re¬ 
lative value of foreign and British sugar, is the price of each at the co¬ 
lonial market ; instead of which, the price always referred to, is the 
price in Europe, after the charges of freight, duty, Sec. are added to the 
original cost. The not attending to this necessary distinction, has 
probably given rise to the very erroneous idea above noticed, which 
has occasioned more ill-will and groundless complaint against the 
British sugar-planter, than any other circumstance. While I am on 
this subject it may not be improper to take some notice of the dispa¬ 
rity between the profits obtained on their sugar by the British and 
French planters in Great Britain and France. In a French public*- 
