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sent moment, matter of pure theory. We may well be excused for treating but slightly the benefits of a more open trade between the West Indies and America, when the folly of our rulers has shut out the mother country from all intercourse with that great and growing market. And to inquire whether the planter would be relieved by peace, might look like mocking him in his distresses, while our statesmen are every where seeking new quarrels, or devising pledges for making the old ones eternal. * Leaving, therefore, to a fitter opportunity, the full discussion of those subjects, we shall only take them up, so far as is necessary to complete our account of West Indian affairs, by showing, very briefly, that whatever benefits might accrue to the planters, as well as to all orders of the state, from the liberal and enlightened measures in question, those persons greatly deceive themselves who expect to find a remedy for the radical evils of the system in any such palliatives.

Let us begin with supposing that the trade to America were thrown open, and the West Indians allowed to barter for lumber and provisions, sugar and coffee, as well as rum and molasses. They would certainly get off a part of their surplus in this way; but the proportion, we are afraid, would not be very considerable. Before 1806, they enjoyed this trade under the permission of proclamations; and they exported, on an average of ten years ending 1803, little more than 6000 hogsheads annually. A vent of this extent would evidently afford but a slight relief to a glut such as we have described. + But suppose, as some have done upon very slight grounds, that the demand in America is for 30,000 hogsheads, and that we were to supply the whole of it; -what would become of the same quantity which they must at present, by this hypothesis, be taking from the enemy's islands? It would find its way over with the rest to Europe, and displace an equal amount in that market: and this loss would necessarily fall upon the sugars now exported by us.

The effects, then, of opening the American trade to its fullest

VOL. XIII. No. 26.

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* See the late Declarations, and other official correspondence. In the Appendix to the Third Report of the Committee of 1807, it is distinctly stated by the most respectable West Indians, that the relief to the sugar market would not be very considerable, unless, besides allowing our planters to barter their sugars, our government should also blockade the enemy's islands, or, in some other effectual way, prevent the Americans from getting sugar elseSee, particularly, the evidence of Messrs Wedderburn, Hughan and Shirley. Can the assertions in the text receive a

where.

stronger confirmation?

extent, must all resolve themselves into a reduction of the price paid for articles of American growth, necessary to the cultivation of sugar; and the effects of this measure in lowering the prime cost of sugar, must be confined to that part of the prime cost which consists of expenses for American stores. By the accounts from which the Committee of 1807 formed their estimate of the whole prime cost of sugar, we are enabled to ascertain the proportion of this which belongs to American stores. The sums paid on seven sugar estates in Jamaica for American supplies in 1806, together with those paid for the same articles on an eighth estate, during that and the three preceding years, form a total of 87971.; and the whole expenses of the same estates, during the same time, amount to 62,570. The American supplies, then, do not form one seventh of the whole charge of making sugar. It is from these very accounts that the West Indians estimate the prime cost of the Jamaica sugar at 20s. 10d., after deducting the net proceeds of the rum. But it will appear, that, making no allowance for the sale of that article, the whole charges are 27s. Id. The proportion of this, then, which consists of American stores, is less than one seventh, or about 3s. 10d. How much of this is it likely that any opening of the American intercourse could save? The Committee have given us no data from which to form any estimate; but we perceive that the Assembly of Trinidad state the price of American stores, in their island, as about double the price in Martinico and Guadaloupe. We own that, to us, this appears utterly incredible; for British vessels are permitted to import those stores without limitation, and also to reexport sugar and coffee in any quantity to America: and surely so great a difference of price would immediately draw them into this traffic, until something like a level should be restored. If we allow a fall of twenty, or, at the utmost, twenty-five per cent., as likely to result from the perfect freedom of trade, the prime cost of the sugar will only be lowered 1s. 2d. per cwt.; and even the statement of the Trinidad Council would lead to an allowance of little more than 1s. 5d. Inconsiderable as this relief would be, we agree entirely in the propriety of granting it; and hope to show, in a future article, that the grounds upon which it has been withheld, are equally shortsighted and illiberal.

The restoration of peace would unquestionably diminish the present expenses of bringing sugar to market. The freight and insurance both on supplies and on homeward-bound produce, would fall; and it is certain that new channels of exportation would be opened, for the relief of the market. But against all this may be set the increased facility with which the enemy's sugars would reach Europe, and the encouragement of his cultiva

tion by a revival of his trade. The foreign colonies, it is universally admitted, make sugars cheaper than ours can. Their soil is much better, and they pay fewer taxes. These advantages, but especially the former, are more than sufficient to balance our superiority in capital, manufactures and navigation. The Committee of 1789 estimated the total effect of them, as reducing the prices in the proportion of five to seven. It is easy to perceive, then, that the peace prices in the market of the world, when peace is restored, will be regulated by the cheapness of the foreign sugars, and that as long as our market requires a large exportation-as long, in short, as the glut continues--our own sugars must be sold, both at home and abroad, according to the prices of the cheap produce.

We apprehend, then, that as the evil complained of in the colonial fyftem did not originate in any thing eife than the exceffive cultivation of the cane, the war did not necessarily aggravate this evil to any confiderable degree. Hoftilities might, in fact, have been carried on by a country poffeffing a decided naval fuperiority, not only without increafing the diftreffes of its colonifts, but in fuch a way as to throw upon the enemy the greater preffure of the load common to all Weft Indian proprietors. By abstaining from conquefts in the Weft Indies-by carefully preventing the introduction of flaves into foreign colonies in our veffels-by impeding the navigation of the enemy to and from his fugar islands, as far as we could, confiftently with the law of nations-by doing our utmoft to prevent him from fupplying his colonies with flaves *. by adopting every method of encouraging our own trade with the Continent, clinging to our American connexions, and showing ourselves the protectors of neutrality, wherever the general inteD d 2

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* To check the neutral slave traffic carried on with the enemy's islands, might have been impracticable, unless some previous arrangement had been made with the American government. We certainly should inculcate a respect for neutral rights, as necessary at all times, but as more essential in proportion to the extension of hostilities, and the violation of all public law by our enemies. Nevertheless, we question whether, in point of strict justice, and according to the law of nations itself, cargoes of kidnapped human beings are to be respected as innocent merchandize, when found on board neutral vessels on their voyage to an enemy's port. This, at least, is certain, that, with a government so well disposed as the American has always been to abolish the slave trade, few obstacles could have occurred to prevent some amicable arrangement which should give us the power of obstructing this odious intercourse with the foreign islands. No such attempt, however, could be expected from those who allowed the slave trade to flourish under the protection of English laws.

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refts of the world permitted it to exift :-By fuch a policy as this, while we raised our name amidst the ruins of public character by which we were every where furrounded, we should also have preferved our commerce from the general wreck of induftrious pursuits; and inflicted upon our adverfaries the greatest share of the diftreffes which all colonial adventurers have brought upon themselves-while we checked the progrefs of the common evil-faving the Antilles from bankruptcy, and redeeming Africa from defolation. Thus much might have been effected by virtue and prudence: it would have been a palliative, at leaft; and, if applied in time, it might almoft have effected a cure. But our rulers were pleased to pursue an oppofite courfe-of which, by the way, one can find no difapprobation recorded in of the Weft Indian reports, largely as they treat of every other topic,-and feem to have exerted themselves to elicit calamities from the war which did not naturally attend it, and which it is much to be feared peace cannot now leffen. Our ftatefmen, our ambitious ftatefmen, muft needs reverse the policy of their fathers; and, inftead of conquering America in Germany, bethink themselves of defending Germany in the West Indies. Armament after armament must be equipped, and army fucceed army in the inheritance of a peftilential climate, and conquefts barren of all but honour. Barren? They were worfe than barren. They aggravated every distress of which our own colonies had to complain ;-they haftened the progrefs of our enemy's colonial resources to the point where they muft undermine our own ;-they brought on the day of reckoning with Africa, far fooner than it could otherwife have come-and revenged the countless wrongs which the owes to our colonies, by involving those colonies in one fcene of mifery. If we were bid to exprefs, by a fingle phrafe, the object of the only fuccessful operations carried on against the enemy by land, during the last war, we fhould certainly fay, the encouragement of the slave trade:'* and, itrange and difmal to relate, this was the fyftem

* We must here repeat what we have so often before noticed, because the recollections are highly edifying, that the warfare pursued in the West Indies, viz. the capture of the enemy's settlements, suddenly increased the British slave trade to nearly double its former amount. This plan was again pursued during the present war; and the remedy of preventing the slave trade was only applied late in 1805. The extension of the slave trade, and the conquest of a sugar colony, are happily no longer synonymous terms: yet surely the state of the home market, and the difficulty of reexporting produce, not to mention the benefits which the hostile colonies derive from being in our possession, and having access to our capital, should lead us to deprecate, as a piece of the most unmeaning restlessness, the plan of attacking Martinico, said to be now in agitation, for a new proof of our vigorous policy.

fyftem adopted by a government which profeffed itself generally friendly to the abolition; unanimously the patrons of religion and focial order; and altogether chivalrous in the cause of oppreffed princes, and exiled nobles. Unhappily, not they, and not even the enemy whom they encouraged in his African traffic, but their own countrymen, have reaped the reward of fo much inconfiftency -fo much fhortsighted rapacity-fuch fneaking from the performance of their duty-and skulking behind the established prejudices of the mercantile mob. But, whatever the country may have hereafter to pay for the calamities which are now oppreffing the Weft Indian body, let us never forget that the creatures of the flave trade are they who now folicit relief from the calamities which it has entailed upon them;-and, as often as their tale is told, while it excites our compaffion, let it also keep alive the memory of that long reign of impolicy and contradictions, to which England and Europe, as well as the other parts of the world, owe so many of their prefent afflictions,

ART. VIII. Partenopex of Blois; a Romance: Freely translated from the French of M. Le Grand, with Notes. By William Stewart Rose. 4to. London. 1808.

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F critics could be prepossessed by the external beauty of a book, we should perhaps speak too favourably of this work. But we are past all gallantry of that kind. The whiteness, firmness, and purity of paper,-the strength and rotundity of types,-the breadth of margins,-even the attractions of coloured engraving, we can behold with equanimity-Integri laudamus; and if the author has sent his poem into the world with all these arts of fascination, in imitation of those fair suitors of whom he has read in romance, to smooth the wrinkled brow of criticism, we must tell him, that, to us, he might as well have offered base gold, or even his annual buck (see p. 200.) from the New Forest.

Yet we cannot pass without notice, the engravings from designs by Mr Richard Smirke, which decorate this elegant volume. For these, Mr Rose claims the praise of exhibiting a faithful picture of the scenery and habits of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the result of much industry and faithful observation.' We believe this to be perfectly well deserved. They are strictly according to the costume of those times; and free from that mixture of arms, dresses, and styles of architecture, which generally prevails in the drawings of undistinguishing artists. Considered in this light, they not only adorn, but illustrate the poem; and may be strikingly contrasted with those contemptible blots in aqu

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