VII. IMPORTANCE OF WEST INDIAN COLONIES TO

EUROPEAN NATIONS

1 The history of the great American Archipelago cannot be better concluded, than by a recapitulation of the advantages it procures to those powers which have successively invaded it. It is only by the impulse which the immense productions of this Archipelago have given to trade, that it must ever hold a distinguished place in the annals of nations; since, in fact, riches are the spring of all the great revolutions that disturb the globe.

The islands of the other hemisphere yield annually fifteen millions of livres to Spain; eight millions to Denmark; thirty millions to Holland; eighty-two millions to England; and one hundred and twenty-six millions to France. The productions therefore gathered in fields that were totally uncultivated within these three centuries, are sold in our continent for about two hundred and sixty-one millions of livres.

This is not a gift that the New World makes to the Old. The people who receive this important fruit of the labour of their subjects settled in America, give in exchange, though with evident advantage to themselves, the produce of their soil and of their manufactures. Some consume the whole of what they draw from these distant possessions; others, make the overplus the basis of a prosperous trade with their neighbours. Thus every nation that is possessed of property in the New World, if it be truly industrious, gains still less by the number of men it maintains abroad without any expence, than by the population which those procure it at home. To subsist a colony in America, it is necessary to cultivate a province in Europe; and this additional labour increases the inward strength and real wealth of the nation. The whole globe is sensible of this purpose.

The labours of the people settled in those islands, are the sole basis of the African trade: they extend the fisheries and the cultures of North America, afford a good market for the manufactures of Asia, and double, perhaps treble, the activity of all Europe.

1 Raynal, A Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies [1783], VI, 412, 413-414.

They may be considered as the principal cause of the rapid motion which now agitates the universe. This ferment must increase, in proportion as cultures, that are so capable of being extended, shall approach nearer to their highest degree of perfection.

1 A full enumeration of the various articles which furnish the ships bound to the West Indies with an outward freight, would indeed comprise a considerable proportion of almost all the productions and manufactures of this kingdom, as well as of many of the commodities imported into Great Britain from the rest of Europe and the East Indies. The inhabitants of the sugar islands are wholly dependant on the mother country and Ireland, not only for the comforts and elegancies, but also for the common necessaries of life. In most other states and kingdoms, the first object of agriculture is to raise food for the support of the inhabitants; but many of the rich productions of the West Indies yield a profit so much beyond what can be obtained from grain, that in several of the sugar islands, it is true economy in the planter, rather to buy provisions from others, than to raise them by his own labour. The produce of a single acre of his cane fields, will purchase more Indian corn than can be raised in five times that extent of land, and pay besides the freight from other countries. Thus not only their household furniture, their implements of husbandry, their clothing, but even a great part of their daily sustenance, are regularly sent to them from America or Europe. On the first head therefore, it may generally be observed, that the manufacturers of Birmingham and Manchester, the clothiers of Yorkshire, Gloucestershire, and Wilts, the potters of Staffordshire, the proprietors of all the lead, copper, and iron works, together with the farmers, victuallers, and brewers, throughout the kingdom, have a greater vent in the British West Indies, for their respective commodities, than perhaps they themselves conceive to be possible. Who would believe that woollens constitute an article of great consumption in the torrid zone? Such however, is the fact. Of the coarser kinds especially, for the use of the negroes, the export is prodigious.

1 Edwards, History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies [1793], II, 361-362, 373-375.

Even sugar itself, the great staple of the West Indies, is frequently returned to them in a refined state; so entirely do these colonies depend on the mother country; centering in her bosom all their wealth, wishes, and affections. . .

On a retrospect of the whole, it may be truly affirmed, that the British sugar islands in the West Indies, (different in all respects from colonies in northern latitudes) answer in every point of view, and if I mistake not, to a much greater extent than is commonly imagined, all the purposes and expectations for which colonies have been at any time established. They furnish (as we have seen) a sure and exclusive market for the merchandize and manufactures of the mother country and her dependencies, to the yearly amount of very near four millions of pounds sterling. They produce to an immense value, and in quantities not only sufficient for her own consumption, but also for a great export to foreign markets, many valuable and most necessary commodities, none of which interfere in any respect with her own productions; and most of which, as I shall demonstrate hereafter, she cannot obtain on equal terms elsewhere: accompanied too with this peculiar benefit, that in the transfer of these articles from one part of her subjects to another part, not one shilling is taken from the general circulating wealth of the kingdom. Lastly, they give such employment to her ships and seamen, as while it supports and increases her navigation in time of peace, tends not in the smallest degree to obstruct, but, on the contrary, contributes very eminently to aid and invigorate, her operations in war. It is evident therefore, that in estimating the value and importance of such a system, no just conclusions can be drawn, but by surveying it comprehensively, and in all its parts, considering its several branches as connected with, and dependant on each other, and even then, the sum of its advantages will exceed calculation. We are told indeed, among other objections which I shall consider more at large in the concluding chapter of my work, that all the products of the British West Indies may be purchased cheaper in the colonies of foreign nations. If the fact were true, as it certainly is not, it would furnish no argument against the propriety and necessity of settling colonies of our own; because it must be remembered, that foreign nations will allow

few or none of our manufactures to be received in their colonies in payment that their colonists contribute in no degree, by the investment and expenditure of their profits, to augment the national wealth, nor, finally, do they give employment exclusively to British shipping. To what extent the naval power of Great Britain is dependant on her colonial commerce, it is difficult to ascertain. If this trade be considered in all its channels, collateral and direct, connected as it is with our fisheries, &c. perhaps it is not too much to affirm, that it maintains a merchant navy on which the maritime strength of the kingdom so greatly depends, that we should cease to be a nation without it.

1 But it is requisite farther to observe, in order to set the importance of these islands in a full light, that, exclusive of the benefits flowing from their direct trade with us, they will bring us likewise very considerable advantages, by the encouragement they will afford to other branches of our commerce. The African trade, more especially at the beginning, will receive a new spring from their demands, since all that they can do either at present or in future, must arise from the labour of their Negroes. The supplying them with slaves therefore, will be both an instantaneous and a continual source of wealth, to such as are employed in that lucrative trade, more especially to those who have the largest share of it, the merchants of London, Bristol, and Liverpool.

We have therefore shewn, how this trade comes to be of such importance to Great Britain, as it is carried on principally with our own manufactures, and more especially with woollen goods of different kinds, to a very large amount, and that all the incidental profits, exclusive of what is produced by slaves, which arise from our correspondence with Africa, whether obtained by the purchase of elephants teeth and gold-dust, upon the coasts of that country, or from the sale of commodities to foreigners in the West Indies, finds its way hither. On the winding up of the account therefore, as the sale of the Negroes centers in the West Indies, the profit arising upon them, and every other accession of gain, from

1 Campbell, Considerations on the Nature of the Sugar Trade [1763], pp. 217-220.

whatever article produced, centers ultimately here, and becomes the property of the inhabitants of Britain.

This will appear with the greater degree of evidence, when we reflect, that more than the moiety of that part of the cargo for the African trade, which is not made up of our own goods, consists of the manufactures of the East-Indies. It has been before observed, that besides the quantity of India goods employed on the coast of Africa; there is likewise no small demand for the same commodities in our old sugar colonies; and of course there will be the like demand in the new. We see from hence, how the comprehensive chain of commerce is united, and how the different products of the most distant parts of the world, are carried to and brought from these distant countries in British shipping; and that all the emoluments arising from this extensive navigation, is in the end the reward of the consummate skill, the indefatigable industry, and the perpetual application, of the traders in this happy isle, and how it is to be augmented and supported by this new accession of territory.

The prodigious compass of this commercial circulation, would be after all very defectively represented, if we should omit the mentioning the constant correspondence that subsists between the sugar islands and the northern colonies. A correspondence equally necessary, and reciprocally advantageous to those of our countrymen who are settled in both; and a correspondence therefore, which will be always maintained, and by which the numerous subjects of Britain who are seated on the continent of America, and those settled in the West India islands, in pursuing their own immediate interests contribute, and contribute effectually to each other's support. This is a circumstance, that must fill the breast of every well-meaning man with the highest and most rational pleasure, and engage him to contemplate this subject, with a satisfaction, words would but faintly express, that kind of satisfaction, which warms the heart of a parent, when he sees his children assiduous in their application to those methods of providing for their welfare, which have a tendency to promoting their common interests, by which their harmony doubles the effects of their industry. . .