WEST INDIES. 
CHAP. V.] 
339 
hogshead) there remains £. 3 17.9. 10^. which being 
added to the former sums, it will be found that the 
whole loss sustained by the planter for the sake of 
the British refinery, is not less than £.8 9 . 9 . 2 d. 
sterling on every hogshead of his sugar of 16 cwt. 
which he sends to the English market, amounting 
on 140,000 hogsheads to the prodigious sum of 
£. 1,184,166 13s - . 4<i. sterling money! Perhaps 
the circumstance may come more irr v mediately home 
to the reader, by shewing how this loss affects an 
individual. For instance, the average returns of 
Mr. Beckford’s plantations are, if I mistake not, 
about two thousand hogsheads of sugar annually. 
He sustains therefore a loss of ,£.]6,916 13.9. 4 d. 
per annum, that the British refiners may get about 
one-third of the money! 
It is however to be remembered, that the pre¬ 
ceding calculations are founded on the supposition 
that leave was granted to import refined sugar into 
Great Britain from the British colonies at the du¬ 
ties which are now paid on raw or muscovado. I 
am apprized that the revenue would, in that case, 
sustain a loss proportionate to the diminution in the 
quantity of sugar imported, unless it was (as un¬ 
doubtedly it would be) made up by an adequate in¬ 
crease of the duties on the improved commodity. 
With every allowance however on this account (as 
well as for an increased rate of freight) the planter’s 
profits would be sufficiently great; and, in truth, 
refined sugar imported from the colonies, would 
afford to bear a much heavier duty than merely 
