In a Letter of mine, which you inserted in your
Paper of Nov. 3, was contained a view of the state of our commerce
with the American continent colonies. I now send you a view of our
commerce with the West India or Sugar Islands, taken, as the former
was, from the Custom House accounts. When your Readers have
compared and considered these accounts, they may form a judgment
which of those two classes of colonies is most beneficial to the
mother country. I am Sir, your humble servant,
which is £2,281,509 12s. 8d. per ann. on a medium
of said 5 years,
which is £785,545 2s. 4d. per ann. on a medium of
said 5 years.
Upon the face of these Custom House accounts it
appears, that there is a balance against Great Britain of
£1,495,954 10s. 4d. per annum, and by the same
accounts that the balance against her annually increases. But to
reduce this balance, which appears upon this comparative view of
direct exports and imports, let us suppose, as we did in the case
of the Northern colonies, that the errors of entry and of valuation
will admit of one third more to be added to the amount of the
export, though by no means just even for a comparative view of the
value of the two setts of colonies to Great Britain; for not above
one fourth of the exports to the Northern colonies is in foreign
European and Asiatic goods, but to the West India Islands two
thirds of the amount of the exports is in foreign goods; therefore,
there is not that latitude for erroneous entries, as there is to
the continent, it being impossible to make wrong entries for goods
entitled to a drawback as all those of foreigners are.
Then with the additional value to the imports
mentioned under the account thereof, and the additional value to
the exports just stated, the account will stand thus:
But out of this balance must be struck what the Sugar Planters
pay the Irish for provisions, and the British Merchants for slaves.
As to the Irish provisions, the islands take but a small part of
their consumption from them; they being chiefly supplied from North
America, not only with provisions, but many other things, whom they
pay in their products, that those Northern colonies consume. The
very rum that goes directly from the Islands to Ireland, yields as
much as the provisions they take from thence amounts to: And as to
what they pay the British Merchant for slaves, it is almost
impossible to fix with precision upon any amount, from the very
nature of the trade on the coast of Africa; but to allow that the
annual cost of Negroes is equal to the whole annual export from
Great Britain to Africa, we shall not be impeached for being under
the mark at least, when it is considered that part of the produce
of that export is returned in gold dust, dying woods, and elephants
teeth to Great Britain; part of its goes to supply foreign
plantations with Negroes; and part of it goes in slaves to the
continent colonies from Pensylvania to Florida, where a stock of
70,000 Negroes is to be kept up in proportion to that of 250,000 in
the sugar colonies. Now the whole export of Africa per ann. upon a
medium of the above five years, is £433,529 17s. 8d.
which deducted from the above balance of £2,375,204 5s.
11d. leaves still an annual balance against Great Britain of
£1,941,674 8s. 3d. while the poor Northern colonies
have a balance in favour of G. Britain of £1,000,000 which all
their other trade cannot pay, they being constantly in debt to G.
Britain; when these Sugar Islands would be worth little to their
owners, in comparison of what they are now, if it was not for cheap
and ready supplies from the Northern colonies, of lumber for the
building their houses, sugar mills, casks to contain their produce,
horses, provisions of the cheapest kind for feeding their slaves in
particular, and ships to bring home their produce at the cheapest
rate known.