Molasses, Syrups, Paneles, Coffee, and Pimento, since the first of last December. The principal exchange is of Sugar and Rum. The Sugar is generally supposed to amount to twenty-five thousand hogsheads directly, besides fifteen thousand hogsheads in the shape of Refined Sugar from England. As to Rum, the dependence of all the Islands, except Jamaica, is as great upon the Middle Colonies of North America for the consumption of their Rum, as it is for Subsistence and Lumber. Jamaica sends about eleven thousand puncheons to London, which stocks the market at the present price. Lower the price, the method is plain and easy, the consumption increases in proportion. Nor will the revenue suffer. How far the expedient may save Jamaica, in this momentous article of their manufacture, I leave to be explained by gentlemen more intimately acquainted with that Island. The Rum of Barbadoes, the Leeward Islands, and the Government of Granada, does not come to England, except in small portions. It goes in part to Ireland; and all the rest, the great quantity, is distributed chiefly amongst the Middle Colonies of North America, agreeable to the law of reciprocal exchange. The Agreement of those Colonies, which is to take place the tenth of next September, extends, in words, only to the withholding of all supplies; but it must effect a total suspension of commerce. They will not send their Vessels in ballast, to purchase with gold and silver the Goods they have been accustomed to receive in exchange for the products of their own soil and industry. It is an idea repugnant to every principle of commerce—it is more; it is repugnant to the spirit which now inflames those Colonies. Sir, I have shown, I trust, the absolute dependence of the Sugar Colonies upon the Middle Colonies of America, in three essential points, viz: for Corn and Provisions for subsistence; for Lumber and other necessaries for the co maintenance of their Plantations; and lastly, for the consumption of their produce of all kinds—greatly of Sugar, but principally of Rum. This doctrine of the dependence of Sugar Colonies upon North America is confirmed by an authority which will not be disputed. The Act of Parliament of the sixth of George the Second, chapter thirteenth, was made upon this occasion. The British Sugar Colonies complained of the great increase of the French Sugar Colonies, and demonstrated the increase to have been owing principally to the support which the French Sugar Colonies received from the Middle Provinces of North America, in exchange for Sugar and Molasses. Perhaps it is beside my present purpose to remark the manner, in which the Administration of those days adjusted the great dispute. Sir, they contrived to please both sides. To the Islands they gave the letter of the law; and the Continent they indulged, in the breach of it. The fact is all I want. It shows,, that even the French Sugar Colonies do depend, in no small degree, upon North America. Nor are the Danes in the Islands, nor the Dutch in the Southern Continent, an exception. Such is the force of that principle, which considers a Sugar Plantation as a manufactory obliged to raise its own materials. If, in the course of events during this unhappy dispute, the foreign Colonies should be deprived of their resources from America, it is not my province to examine whether the distress will be looked upon with indifference: but it becomes me to hope that Great Britain will never suffer her own to be ruined for want of the accustomed and accessary supplies from North America.

Q. What is the kind of Property in the West India Islands? And can you estimate the value thereof?

A. The nature of the property vested in the West Indies will appear by the estimate of its value. I shall calculate in sterling money of Great Britain. To begin with Barbadoes. It stands first on the map. This Island contains one hundred and fight or six thousand acres. The Land is almost entirely under cultivation; but I will reckon only upon the hundred thousand. From a knowledge of a multitude, of appraisements made upon oath, by freeholders of the vicinity, upon occasions of deaths, or of extents for the payment of debts; from many actual sales; I state that thirty Pounds an acre is a reasonable valuation. I include with the Land all the dwelling-houses in the country, the Sugar Works, and the young Crops. I throw in the Cattle, the Plantation, and household Furniture. This article, the Land, amounts to three millions. The Negroes, by a poll tax, in which the whole number is certainly not included, are seventy-five thousand; cheap at forty Pounds each, they make a second sum of three millions. I throw in the two Towns, whose rents amount to forty thousand Pounds a year, as a casting weight to make good the aggregate sum of six millions. Taking Barbadoes as a standard by which to measure all the rest of the Sugar Colonies, I observe that the Sugar exported from Barbadoes to all parts, at a medium of many years, (it is a calculation formed upon the receipts of the Duty of four and an half percent.) is about fifteen thousand common hogsheads a year. Now the Sugar imported into Great Britain alone, from all the Sugar Colonies, amounted, in the year seventy-three, to one hundred and seventy thousand hogsheads, allowing ten hundred weight of Sugar to a hogshead. The import of seventy-four is more. I will suppose the produce of Barbadoes to be as one in ten. If a part of the Barbadoes Sugar is clayed, if its muscovado is properest for common use, yet there are clayed Sugars from other Islands; the muscovado of several, especially of St. Kitt's, is fitter for the refiner. Besides, twenty thousand such hogsheads are deducted, and a great number of common hogsheads, I mean the exports to North America, are omitted before the proportion of one in ten is stated. If Barbadoes yields Ginger, Cotton, and Alloes, the other Colonies add to the same products Coffee, Pimento, and other articles. The capital of Barbadoes then being six millions, and its produce as one in ten of the produce of all the West Indies, it is fair to conclude, at the same proportion, the capital of the whole to be sixty millions: a conclusion which amply warrants the Petition in declaring it to be upwards of thirty millions. I take nothing in the estimate for the value of the future increase of Jamaica and the new settled Islands.

Q. Can you make any estimate of the value of West India Property owned by persons who live in England; and of the amount of the debt due to this Kingdom from the West Indies?

A. Of the millions vested in the West Indies, many are the property of persons residing in England, and not a few are united and consolidated with the landed property of this Kingdom. It is difficult to ascertain the total. I have endeavoured at a calculation for Barbadoes, and am below the mark in stating it at one million four hundred thousand Pounds. In the other Islands, for obvious reasons, the proportion is greater than in Barbadoes. The most eminent Merchants will tell you that they have hardly any body to correspond with in St. Christopher's, except the overseers of plantations. Resuming Barbadoes as a rule to measure with, the proportion is fourteen millions. It is a more difficult and less pleasing task to investigate the millions due to the Merchants and others in this Kingdom, upon the security of West India Plantations. I can form no particular estimate. The sum in general, is immense. The Sugar trade, from its infancy, by reason of the small capitals of the first Planters, and the great cost of a Sugar Manufacture, must have been the creatures of credit. It was raised to the present pitch by the wealth of the Merchant supporting the industry of the Planter. Neither is it necessary to be exact in the value of the property of the English residents, nor of the debt to the English Merchants and others. For the Sugar Colonies are really no other than a British Manufacture, established at the distance of three and four thousand miles, for reasons of convenience. And the dependence of this Manufacture is the same as if it was situated in the heart of the Kingdom. I do not retract the idea of its dependence upon North America. In such a case it can be suggested only in theory; Great Britain must draw from North America the supplies, without which her Manufacture, wheresoever it is situated, is incapable of subsisting.

Q. What are the advantages of the Sugar Colonies to Great Britain? And what to the Revenue thereof?

A. I desire, sir, I may consider them as a British Manufacture, whose capital is sixty millions. The advantage is not that the profits all centre here; it is, that it creates, in the course of attaining those profits, a commerce and a navigation in which multitudes of your people, and millions of your money are employed; it is, that the support which the Sugar Colonies received in one shape, they give in another. In proportion to their dependence upon North America, and upon Ireland, they enable North America