digest the instructive materials submitted to the Legislature in the other, we have an example (as yet too rare among our merchants) of the benefits which the theory of commerce may derive from applying a stock of practical knowledge to the formation of general views. How many merchants are rich in experimental information; and how little has political economy, the most important of sciences, profited by their exertions!

To those who are connected with the West Indies, it is likely that the whole of this pamphlet may afford some degree of interest. But the general reader, whose attention is fixed more on the result than on the detail of the inquiry, will be chiefly interested in the latter part that part which begins in the Fourth Chapter, after the Report of the Committee of the House of Commons appointed to inquire into the commercial state of the West Indies, had come into the Author's hands.

AN

INQUIRY

INTO THE

STATE OF THE WEST INDIES.

CHAPTER I.

Value of the West Indies to Great Britain.

THE real wealth of an empire consists not in

accumulated riches, but in the diffusion of industrious habits throughout the various classes of its population. However common, therefore, it may be with the inconsiderate to appreciate a branch of commerce by the amount which it adds to the monied capital of a country, the more attentive inquirer will form his estimate on different grounds. He will ask, as the primary consideration, what proportion of the lower classes of the community owe to this particular branch of commerce their employment and their subsistence; and after ascertaining its importance to that numerous portion of society who

B

live by labour, he will proceed to investigate its value to the capitalist, whose province it is to give to that labour a beneficial direction. His next consideration will be, the value of this trade as a nursery of seamen; and it will not be denied that to a country like Great Britain, dependent for her rank among nations on the state of her maritime power, the education and maintenance of seamen is not only necessary for dignity, but indispensable for safety.

Let us, therefore, endeavour to ascertain the value of the West-India trade to Great Britain,

1. As a source of employment to her artisans and labourers;

2. As a nursery of seamen;

3. As productive of public revenue.

The traffic of Britain comprehends within its extensive sphere transactions with countries in the most opposite stages of commercial progress. Some nations may be considered as nearly in the same state as ourselves; others, like Holland, are reputed to be farther advanced; while a third class will be allowed by all to be far behind us. To the merchant, each of these different situations presents views of advantage or disadvantage, on the respective merits of which it is difficult to decide. But it is obvious that, to the manufacturer, that country is most valuable which has few manufactures in

itself, and which sends us the produce of its soil in return for the produce of our labour. America (as Mr. Bosanquet remarks, in his very judicious Treatise on the Value of Commerce and Colonies*) stands to Britain in this predicament. To America, agriculture is evidently the most lucrative of occupa tions. She employs a portion of her people in navigation, and in the active interchange of various commodities; but she manufactures scarcely any of those commodities herself. She imports from this country not only her linens and her woollens; but even where the raw material is produced on her own soil, as in the case of cotton, she ships it to Britain ; and takes back, both for consumption and for traffic, the cloths which our manufacturers have wrought up from her own produce.

Our West-India colonies afford employment to our manufacturers in a still greater proportion, for the extent of capital invested, than the United States of America. Let us hear in this respect the testimony of Mr. Bosanquet, whose habits of business qualify him to judge with particular accuracy of the value of this trade.

+In all the leading features of advantage, the intercourse between Great Britain and the WestIndia Islands is eminently distinguished. Possessing

* Page 10.

f Thoughts on Commerce and Colonies, page 39.