WEST INDIES. 
CHAP. V.] 
327 
reason to repine at the encouragement which is 
thus given to foreigners to resort to her markets. 
It is paying money with one hand, to receive it 
back, in a different shape perhaps, but in more than 
a tenfold proportion, with the other; and no consi¬ 
derate statesman will easily be persuaded to think 
such a system improvident and prejudicial.* 
* Thus, in a tract by William Penn, intituled “ The Benefit of 
Plantations or Colonies,” that celebrated legislator expresses himself 
in the following terms : 
“ I deny the vulgar opinion against plantations, that they weaken 
“ England; they have manifestly enriched, and so strengthened her, 
“ which I briefly evidence thus: First, those that go into a foreign 
,e plantation, their industry there, is worth more than if they stayed 
“ at home, the product of their labour being in commodities of a 
“ superior nature to those of this country : for instance, what is an 
“ improved acre in Jamaica or Barbadoes worth to an improved acre 
“ in England? We know it is three times the value, and the product 
“ of it comes for England, and is usually paid for in English growth 
“ and manufacture. Nay, Virginia shews, that an ordinary industry 
“ in one man produces three thousand pounds weight of tobacco, and 
“ twenty barrels of corn yearly: he feeds himself, and brings as much 
“ of the commodity into England besides, as being returned in the 
“ growth and workmanship of this country, is much more than he 
“ could have spent here : Let it also be remembered, that the three 
“ thousand weight of tobacco brings in two thousand two-pences by 
“ way of custom to the king, which makes twenty-five pounds; an ex- 
“ traordinary profit. Secondly, more being produced and imported than 
“ we can spend here, wc export it to other countries in Europe, which 
“ brings in money, or the growth of those countries , which is the same 
thing ; and this is the advantage of the English merchants and sea- 
“ men." 
To the same purport writes Doctor Charles Davenant, who, if I 
mistake not, held the very same employment of Inspector of the ex- 
