do not buy up the sugar in foreign places in the same manner as other monied men buy up cotton, tallow, and hemp, for the pure purpose of creating a monopoly in few hands; disarranging the proportion between supply and demand, and practising on the credulity of less substantial dealers, in order to obtain undue profit. And by whom is this undue profit defrayed? By the consumers. They bear the burden, together with many losses arising from failures, for which the recoil, producing cheapness after dearness, is but a poor compensation. If the system of protection given to colonial trade prevents the speculation which otherwise would exist, in case that justly. denominated home trade were converted into foreign, it yields more permanent service to the consumer of sugar, than any exaction which his most extravagant ideas could ever have led him to believe he contributed to the West India planter. The manner in which trade is conducted with our West India colonies, and with foreign colonies, is as different as can well be conceived. In regard to the former, the consciousness that so many wealthy houses possess such experience, that they have fully compassed all channels of trade, direct and collateral, prevents either the casual exportation of British goods, or the importation of produce on pure speculation. The merchant not regularly engaged in this business, reasons with himself, that, if a favourable vent occurred, it must be

P

seized upon with superior promptness by persons better competent to judge than himself. Hence, casual consignments to the West Indies rarely occur, especially from London. But the case is widely different with Spanish America, generally, and those places likely to supply us with foreign sugar. Commission merchants are constantly on the alert with plausible descriptions of commercial advantages, obtainable only in their own peculiar market, to tempt unreflecting men to try their luck in adventure. From these accidental shipments, sometimes too small for the occasion, then infinitely too large, the supply can never be properly adjusted to the demand; a press for remittances comes upon the needy adventurer; sales must be made at any price; there cannot be two rates of value at the same time; the cautious trader is obliged equally to suffer with his improvident neighbour, and then succeed all those ruinous fluctuations of price which, sooner or later, entail their long train of evils upon the British public. There is no exaggeration in this picture; the mercantile world are now tolerably sobered, and have discovered, that dazzling pictures of rapid accumulation prove sometimes illusory.

To substantiate these conclusions, it may be useful to view the variations of price which occurred in a few leading articles of merchandise during the great speculative mania in 1825.

Cotton rose from 9d. to Is. 64d., above 100 per

cent.

Tobacco, 3d. to 6d., nearly the same. Cinnamon and mace fluctuated 200 per cent. Indigo, 60 per cent. Tallow, 53 per cent.; but Sugar advanced only 20 per cent., part of which, undoubtedly, was occasioned by the state of the currency and of commercial credit. It thus incontestably appears, that wherever commerce is changed from a regular, systematic, and well-known channel, into one of which all the branches, modifications, and principles are less known, speculation immediately ensues, through which the community is a loser. Were we to select for a criterion one of the articles above enumerated, cotton for example, calculate the transitions in price solely attributable to speculation, and assume the same transitions to have taken place in sugar, which there is no legigimate reason to dispute, the sugar-consumer would have been a loser, in exchanging steadiness for fluctuation, even imagining that the maintenance of the former entailed upon him the full cost of the protecting duty.

Encouragement of speculation.constitutes a chief objection to the recent innovations in our mercantile system. The sensitiveness betrayed by some of our leading ministers, when they attempted indignantly, in their places in Parliament, to repel the charge, has rather confirmed than altered the popular opinion. It might be well to attend to this fact, before changes in the sugar duties are attempted

OF THE MEANS OF EXTENDING THE SUGAR TRADE GENERALLY OF GREAT BRITAIN.

SECT. I.-Domestic Consumption.

If there be one maxim of political economy more universal in its application than another, it is this: The wisest mode to extend commerce, is to augment the comforts of the people. When the entire of the labouring population is habituated to the extensive use of any article of extraneous growth, it is difficult to calculate the amount of its beneficial effects upon the community at large. Increase of manufactures and encouragement of shipping are far from being the whole of the advantages. View the domestic habits of the labourer, who participates in the any little luxury. He takes delight in the social circle of his connexions; the asperities and hardships of his lot are softened; and he seizes on every opportunity to use his utmost exertion, that he may compass comforts which extend the gratifications of his family. Prudence, care, and foresight, spring from this auspicious state of things. All men are more thrifty when they have acquired some property than when they have none; and on the same principle, in proportion as the condition of the labourer is raised, he husbands more closely his time, and permits no opportunity to slip in

enjoyment of

which any earnings, however slight, can be realized. Increased demand for labour is commensurate with the increased consumption of labourers; and, indeed, if we contrast the prudence and domestic economy of labourers habituated to the use of many commodities, with the heedlessness, and frequently the debauchery and vice, of men not so habituated, and also attentively consider the manner in which this difference of manners influences production, we shall be apt to reverse the maxim of most political writers, and pronounce a high scale of wants in the labouring population to be a cause, not the consequence, of public prosperity. Well may that system be denominated oppressive, which unnecessarily checks those habits in their growth. But such does taxation on many commodities accomplish in England. Were this unavoidable, or were it calculated to increase the public revenue, little need be said, because we must yield to public exigencies; but when there are decisive grounds to show that the revenue is not so great at the present duty on sugar, as it would be were the duty reduced, it surely is unpardonable, and savours of infatuation, to continue it. On articles consumed exclusively by the affluent, heavy taxes may be levied occasionally; because with this class the influence of fashion may still induce the consumption to remain unaltered. Very different is the case with labourers. With them there is a limit in price; and if you impose exactions beyond that limit, you leave them

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