WEST INDIES. 
CHAP. V.] 
3D 
able commodities, consumption is the criterion. To 
this consideration must be added the well known 
and established axiom, that taxes paid by the public 
at large distribute themselves so equally on the 
whole, as eventually to raise the price of all other 
commodities; each man repaying himself for taxes 
which he pays on other articles, by advancing the 
price of his own. Let the planters then no longer 
be contemptuously told (for such has been the lan¬ 
guage of their adversaries) that they have groaned 
without a grievance. I have shewn that they have 
been driven, from time to time, by duties accumu¬ 
lated on duties, from the cultivation of one produc¬ 
tion to another; and if (apprehensive that the few 
valuable staple commodities which now remain to 
them are in danger of being sacrificed, as others 
have been, to a system of impolitic taxation) they 
state their apprehensions to ministers, by a recital of 
plain facts, and a perseverance in well-grounded 
complaints, it seems to me they are equally serving 
government, and defending their own rights and 
properties.—Supplies must necessarily be raised; 
they admit it; but contend that there is a point at 
which taxation on any particular object must stop, 
or it will not only defeat its own purpose, but have 
the effect also of endangering all former duties laid 
on the same object, by totally destroying its culti¬ 
vation or manufacture. The subject now naturally 
leads me to the consideration of drawbacks and 
bounties, on the re-export of British plantation pro¬ 
ducts, the second head of our present inquiries •, 
