Should it be agreed, & become a Part of the Law of Nations, that the Cultivators of the Earth are not to be molested or interrupted in their Peaceable and useful Employment, the Inhabitants of the Sugar Islands would perhaps come under the Protection of such a Regulation, which would be a great Advantage to the Nations who at present hold those Islands, since the Cost of Sugar to the Consumer in those Nations, consists not only in the Price he pays for it by the Pound, but in the accumulated Charge of all the Taxes he pays in every War to fit out Fleets and maintain Troops for the Defence of the Islands that raise the Sugar and the Ships that bring it home. But the Expence of Treasure is not all. A celebrated Philosophical Writer remarks, that when he consider’d the Wars made in Africa for Prisoners to raise Sugar in America, the Numbers slain in those Wars, the Number that being crowded in Ships perish in the Transportation, & the Numbers that die under the Severities of Slavery, he could scarce look on a Morsel of Sugar without conceiving it spotted with Human Blood. If he had consider’d also the Blood of one another which the white Nations shed in fighting for those Islands, he would have imagined his Sugar not as spotted only, but as thoroughly died red.— On these Accounts I am persuaded that the Subjects of the Emperor of Germany and the Empress of Russia, who have no Sugar Islands, consume Sugar cheaper at Vienna and Moscow, with all the Charge of transporting it after its Arrival in Europe, than the Citizens of London or of Paris. And I sincerely believe that if France & England were to decide by throwing Dice which should have the whole of their Sugar Islands, the Loser in the Throw would be the Gainer. The future Expence of defending them would be saved; the Sugars would be bought cheaper by all Europe if the Inhabitants might make it without Interruption, and whoever imported the Sugar, the same Revenue might be raised by Duties at the Custom Houses of the Nation that consumed it. And on the whole I conceive it would be better for the Nations now possessing Sugar Colonies to give up their Claim to them, let them govern themselves, and put them under the Protection of all the Powers of Europe as neutral Countries open to the Commerce of all, the Profits of the present Monopoly’s being by no means equivalent to the Expence of maintaining them.