by Edmund Burke
The pots are conical, or of a sugar-loaf fashion; open at the point, which must be considered as their bottom; here a strainer is put across. In these pots the sugar purges itself of it’s remaining impurity; the molasses or treacly part disentangles itself from the rest, precipitates and runs out of the aperture at the bottom; it is now in the condition called muscavado sugar, of a yellowish brown colour, and thus it is generally put into the hogshead and shipped off.
But when they have a mind to refine it yet further, and leave no remains at all of the molasses, they cover the pots I have just mentioned with a sort of white clay, like that used for tobacco pipes, diluted with water; this penetrates the sugar, unites with the molasses, and with them runs off; leaving the sugar of a whitish colour, but whitest at top. This is called clayed sugar; the operation is sometimes repeated once or twice more, and the sugar every time diminishing in quantity gains considerably in value; but still is called clayed sugar. Further than this they do not go in the plantations, because an heavy duty of sixteen shillings per hundred weight is laid upon all sugars refined there; it is therefore not to my purpose to carry the account any further.
Of the molasses rum is made, in a manne• that needs no description, since it differs in nothing from the manner of distilling any other spirit. From the scummings of the sugar, a meaner spirit is procured. Rum finds its market in North America, (where it is consumed by the English inhabitants, or employed in the Indian trade, or distributed from thence to the fishery of Newfoundland, and the African commerce;) besides what comes to England and Ireland. However, a very great quantity of molasses is taken off raw and carried to New England to be distilled there.
They compute that when things are well managed, the rum and molasses pay the charges of the plantation, and that the sugars are clear gain. However, by the particulars we have seen, and by others which we may easily imagine, the expences of a plantation in the West-Indies are very great, and the profits at the first view precarious; for the chargeable articles of the windmills, the boiling, cooling and distilling houses, and the buying and subsisting a suitable number of slaves and cattle, will not suffer any man to begin a sugar plantation of any consequence, not to mention the purchase of the land, which is very high, under a capital of at least five thousand pounds. Neither is the life of a planter, a life of idleness and luxury; at all times he must keep a watchful eye upon his overseers, and even oversee himself occasionally. But at the boiling season, if he is properly attentive to his affairs, no way of life can be more laborious, and more dangerous to the health; from a constant attendance day and night in the extreme united heats of the climate and so many fierce furnaces; add to this the losses by hurricanes, earthquakes, and bad seasons; and then consider, when the sugars are in the cask, that he quits the hazard of a planter, to engage in the hazards of a merchant, and ships his produce at his own risk. The sum of all might make one believe, that it could never answer to engage in this business; but notwithstanding all this, there are no parts of the world, in which great estates are made in so short a time as in the West-Indies. The produce of a few good seasons will provide against the ill effects of the worst; as the planter is sure of a speedy and profitable market for his produce, which has a readier sale than perhaps any other commodity in the world.
Large plantations are generally under the care of a manager or chief overseer, who has commonly a salary of a hundred and fifty pounds a year, with overseers under him in proportion to the greatness of the plantation, one to about thirty negroes, and at the rate of about forty pounds. Such plantations too have a surgeon at a fixed salary, employed to take care of the negroes which belong to it. But the course, which is the least troublesome to the owner of the estate, is to let the land with all the works, and the stock of cattle and slaves, to a tenant, who gives security for the payment of the rent, and the keeping up repairs and the stock. The estate is generally estimated to such a tenant at half the neat produce of the best years. Such tenants, if industrious and frugal men, soon make good estates for themselves.
The negroes in the plantations are subsisted at a very easy rate. This is generally by allotting to each family of them a small portion of land, and allowing them two days in the week, Saturday and Sunday, to cultivate it; some are subsisted in this manner, but others find their negroes themselves with a certain portion of Guinea or Indian corn, and to some a salt herring, or a small quantity of bacon or salt pork a day. All the rest of the charge consists in a cap, a shirt, a pair of breeches, stockings and shoes; the whole not exceeding forty shillings a year.
To particularise the commodities proper for the West-India market, would be to enumerate all the necessaries, conveniencies, and luxuries of life; for they have nothing of their own but the commodities I have already mentioned. Traders there make a very large profit upon all they sell; and all kind of handicraftsmen, especially carpenters, bricklayers and brasiers, get very great encouragement.
CHAP. VIII.
THE disposition to industry has a variety of characters, and is by no means constantly of the same colour. Some acquiesce in a moderate labour through the whole of their lives, attended with no risk either to their persons or their gains; such sort of people, who form the best citizens in general, are fit to stay at home. Others full as remote from an indolent disposition, are of quite a different character. These are fiery, restless tempers, willing to undertake the severest labour, provided it promises but a short continuance, who love risk and hazard, whose schemes are always vast, and who put no medium between being great and being undone. Characters of this sort, especially when they happen in low and middling life, are often dangerous members in a regular and settled community. But the West-Indies opens a fair and ample field to encourage persons of such a disposition; and it may be reckoned one very great benefit of our possessions in that part of the world, that besides the vast quantities of our fabrics which they consume, our seamen that they employ, and our revenues that they support, that they are a vent to carry off such spirits, whom they keep occupied greatly to the public benefit. Our dominions are to circumstanced, and afford such a variety, that all dispositions to business, of what kind soever, may have exercise without pressing upon one another. It is besides a great happiness, that unfortunate men, whom unavoidable accident, the frowns of the world, or the cruelty of creditors, would have rendered miserable to themselves, and useless to the public, may find a sort of asylum, where at last they often succeed so well, as to have reason to bless those accidents, which drove them from their country poor, deserted and despised, to return them to it in opulence and credit. Of such a change every one can produce many instances of his own knowledge; as whoever looks about him cannot fail to see a great number of persons, who having taken wrong steps in the beginning of their lives, have established such a character of weakness and imprudence, as prevents them ever after from being trusted or employed, wherever they are at all known, although their characters should be altogether chang’d, and the passions quite subsided which gave occasion to their errors. Such persons become, first, indigent, then desperate, and at last, abandoned; but when they have an opportunity of going where this prejudice does not operate against them, they set up as new men. With the advantage of an experience acquired by their mistakes they are free from the ill reputation which attended them; and they prove of vast service to their country, to which they could be of no advantage whilst they remained in it. There are persons too, far more blameable than either of the former sorts, who having erred without proper caution in points of morality, are deservedly regarded with distrust and abhorrence, though they may be at bottom far from being utterly abandoned; and are still, excepting their character, the stuff proper for making very good men of the world.
These are the several sorts of people, who with very few exceptions, have settled the West-Indies, and North America in a good measure. And thus have we drawn from the rashness of hot and visionary men; the imprudence of youth; the corruption of bad morals; and even from the wretche
dness and misery of persons destitute and undone, the great source of our wealth, our strength and our power. And though this was neither the effect of our wisdom, nor the consequence of our foresight; yet having happened, it may tend to give us more wisdom and a better foresight; for it will undoubtedly be a standing monitor to us, how much we ought to cherish the colonies we have already established, by every encouragement in our power, and by every reasonable indulgence; and it will be an additional spur to make us active in the acquisition of new ones. Since experience has taught us, that as there is no soil or climate which will not shew itself grateful to culture, so that there is no disposition, no character in mankind, which may not be turned with dextrous management to the public advantage. These rulers, who make complaints of the temper of their people in almost any respect, ought rather to lament their own want of genius, which blinds them to the use of an instrument purposely put into their hands by providence, for effecting perhaps the greatest things. There are humours in the body, which contained may be noxious to it, yet which sent abroad are the proper materials for generating new bodies. Providence, and a great minister who should imitate providence, often gain their ends by means, that seem most contrary to them; for earthquakes, and hurricanes, and floods, are as necessary to the well-being of things, as calms and sun-shine; life and beauty are drawn from death and corruption; and the most efficacious medicines are often found united with the most deadly poisons. This, as it is well known, is the order of nature, and perhaps it might not unwisely be considered, as an example for government.
CHAP. IX.
THOUGH we have drawn such great advantages from our possessions in the West-Indies, and are, even in our present way of acting, likely to continue to draw still more; and though we have not wholly neglected the culture of that useful province; yet some will think, that there are some things yet left undone, some things in which our neighbours have set us a laudable example, and some others, which the inconveniencies we have felt from the want of them demonstrate to be necessary to ourselves. But it is not my purpose to handle this subject in its full extent, since it is the wisdom and power of the legislature, and not the unauthorized speculations of a private man, which can effect any thing useful in this way. A West-Indian who is naturally warm in his temper, and not too servilely obedient to the rules of the bienseance, might find some faults in our proceedings here, and would perhaps reason in a manner not unlike the following.
“One would think from some instances, that at the distance we are placed from the seat of authority, we were too remote to enjoy it’s protection, but not to feel it’s weight. Innumerable are the grievances which have oppressed us from our infancy, and which contribute to bring on us a premature old age. Not one of the least evils under which our plantations in the West-Indies groan, is the support of an expensive civil establishment, suited rather to an established and independent country in the plenitude of wealth and power, then to newly settled colonies, to which nobody thinks himself to belong as to his country, and which struggle with a total want of almost all the necessaries and conveniencies of life. The building and maintaining the public works and fortifications, is a weight to which we are totally unequal, and the laying of which upon our shoulders is directly contrary to the very purpose for which you cultivate the colonies; for though the produce of these colonies is in general to be considered as a luxury, yet is it of the greatest value to you; first, as it supplies you with things, which if not from us, you must certainly take from foreign nations. Even in this view the colonies are extremely useful. But there is another, and a much more advantageous light in which you may view them; you may consider them as they supply you with a commodity which you export to other countries, and which helps to bring the ballance of trade in your favour.
The whole secret of managing a foreign market, is contained in two words, to have the commodity of a good kind, and to sell it cheap; and the whole domestic policy of trade consists in contriving to answer these two ends, and principally the latter. Now, by what magic can we effect to sell as cheap as the French at any foreign market, when our planters pay four and a half per cent, duty upon all the sugars, which they ship off in America, and this after having had the same commodity in effect heavily taxed before by the poll on the negroes which work it, and by other impositions, which the planters endure according to the exigencies of the government? when the French planter pays a very insignificant poll-tax at worst, and not one per cent. duty upon all the sugars he exports; when he buys his negroes at an easier rate than we can do; when he• is more favoured upon every occasion, and is besides of a temper more industrious and frugal, than is found in our people. Besides this, upon sudden emergencies we run very much in debt; the island of Barbadoes at one stroke expended thirty thousand pounds upon a fortification, to say nothing of what this and what other islands have done in the same way and upon similar occasions? We are in reality only your factors; you in England ought to consider yourselves as the merchants, who should be at the whole expence, and should willingly abide by whatsoever loss accrues; since the profits are all your own, and since in the end by the course of trade, the loss too, let you take what shifting measures you please to avoid it, and to cheat yourselves with appearances. It is reasonable that you should lay what duty you please upon what is consumed amongst yourselves, because you govern that market as you please; but what you charge, or suffer to be charged on the islands, is only the price of your own goods enhanced so much at the foreign market; there you have no exclusive privilege, and there you are sure to suffer. If that duty which is laid in England upon the produce of our islands, or even half of it were expended, as in reason it ought, for the support of our establishment, we might well be freed from the heavy burthens which we bear, and consequently might be somewhat upon a par with our neighbours. In our present condition, we not only pay very ample salaries to our governors, but they are besides suffered to make the most they can by management of our weakness, to cheat us into voluntary gratuities, which we have given often without a due consideration of our circumstances. This custom prompts our governors to use a thousand arts equally unbecoming their character, and prejudicial to the provinces they govern. It is this which induces them to foment those divisions which tear us to pieces, and which prevent us from attending seriously and entirely to what will best advance the prosperity of our settlements.
It were a tedious and disagreeable task, to run through all the mischiefs of which that one error of sending a governor to make the most he can of us is the fruitful source. The governor, I allow, ought to have every where a certain, reasonable, and even a genteel salary; but then, when he has this, he ought not to be in a condition to hope for any thing further, and ought to consider nothing but how he may best perform the duty of his office.
But I hear it objected, that we are already extremely chargeable to England, who sends her troops to protect us, and her fleets to cover our trade, at a very great expence, for which we ought to be contented, and even thankful; and that it is unreasonable to expect she should bear every part of our burthen, loaded as she is with the weight of a vast national debt, and a most expensive establishment of her own. But to this my answer is short, plain, and practical. The French do all this. They send armies and fleets to protect their colonies as well as you; but they support the establishment in their own plantations notwithstanding; and they are far from supposing this an insupportable burthen. They know that a little judicious expence is often the best oeconomy in the world, and that in this case, it is only sparing their own subjects in the West-Indies, and levying the money laid out for their use upon the foreign consumer. What they do, I see no impossibility of our doing. They learned many of their maxims of trade, as well as many of the fabrics which supply it, from us; I wish we would learn from them in our turn. We have, indeed, some years ago eased the trade, by permitting ships from the islands to carry our produce out directly to foreign markets; but still it is so clogged, that we do not feel all the benefit which we might e
xpect from a more general and better regulated liberty. Not to carry our enquiries further, see what you have gained by prohibiting us to land our sugars directly in Ireland, before they are first entered in an English port. What was the consequence? why your sugars grew dear by this loading and unloading, and passing backward and forward. The Portuguese offered sugars of at least equal goodness, and at a much more moderate price. The merchants in Ireland would not refuse so good an offer out of a compliment to you, who in this instance paid them no compliment at all; and you cannot, for very good reasons, dispute with the Portuguese about it. If this has happened at home, the consequence must be infinitely worse abroad. But it is said that our failures abroad are only owing to this; that we have not ground enough conveniently situated to produce more sugar than satisfies the home demand. But this is far enough from the case. There is in several of the islands, but there is in Jamaica in particular, a great quantity of good land, and well enough situated too, if means were taken to bring it into culture, and a choice of markets to animate the planter in the cultivation; who certainly deserves every sort of encouragement, as he asks for nothing but to be put into such a condition, as may enable him to be of more service to his mother country.”
CHAP. X.
IN the foregoing manner the West-Indian would state some part of what he conceives to be his grievances, and those I believe he would be earnest enough to have remedied. But there are other regulations, which a person not concerned in their affairs might think very proper too, but which the West-Indian would enter into with a much greater degree of phlegm.
There are now allowed to be in our West-Indies at least two hundred and thirty thousand negroe slaves; and it is allowed too, that upon the highest calculation the whites there, in all, do not amount to ninety thousand souls. This disproportion shews so clearly at the first glance how much the colonies are endangered, both from within and without; how much exposed to the assaults of a foreign enemy, and to the insurrection of their own slaves, (which latter circumstance in all our islands keeps the people in perpetual apprehensions) that it may be a just cause of surprise, that no measures whatsoever are taken to correct this dangerous irregularity.