WEST INDIES 
34i 
CHAP. V.] 
Thus have I shewn the magnitude of the price 
at which the British colonists in the West Indies 
have purchased, for a century past, the monopoly of 
the British market for their chief staple commodi¬ 
ties. It is monopoly for monopoly; an arrangment 
not framed by the colonies, but by the mother- 
country herself, who has suffered it to grow sacred 
by time, has recognized it by a multitude of laws, 
and enforced it by stricter ties and recent provisions. 
rary advance in the price of caw sugar, have been the first to raise a 
clamour against the monopoly of supply enjoyed by the planters, 
themselves at the same time possessing the monopoly which I have 
described ! It may not be useless to add, that those people are, in a pro¬ 
portion unknown in any other branch of trade, foreigners: who live 
in the most frugal way in England (about one thousand in the whole) 
*nd retire with their savings to their own country. There are few 
operations more simple, or which require a less expensive apparatus, 
than that of refining sugar. Can it then be just or reasonable to sa¬ 
crifice to a manufacture, thus subordinate in its nature and limited in 
its extent, the essential interests of 65,000 British subjects in the 
West Indies, and half a million of money, which is now annually lost 
to Great Britain, that this manufacture may be supported? It is re¬ 
markable that the same observation occurred to Davenant, who wrote 
soon after the revolution in 1688. Speaking of the impropriety of laying 
heavy duties on the produce of the British West Indies, he proceeds in 
these words : “ And here it may not be improper to take notice par¬ 
ticularly, of the high imposition laid upon refined sugars imported hi¬ 
ther, upon a wrong notion of advancing our manufactures, whereas in 
truth it only turns to the account of about fifty families (for the refiners 
of England are no more) and is greatly prejudicial, and a bar to the 
industry of at least 14,000 persons, which are about the number of 
those who inhabit our islands producing sugar.’’ (Da-venant, Dis¬ 
course 3, on the Plantation Trade.) What would this author have 
said, had he known the fact which I have stated above? 
