THE WEALTH OF NATIONS. 155

willing to pay more, which necessarily raises the price abovethat of common wine. The difference is greater or less, ac-cording as the fashionablcness and scarcity of the wine ren-der the competition of the buyers more or less eager. What-ever it be, the greater part of it goes to the rent of the land-lord. For though such vineyards are in general more care-fully cultivated than most others, the high price of the wineseems to be, not so much the effect, as the cause of this care-ful cultivation. In so valuable a produce the loss occasionedby negligence is so great as to force even the most carelessto attention. A small part of this high price, therefore, is suf-ficient to pay the wages of the extraordinary labour bestowedupon their cultivation, and the profits of the extraordinarystock which puts that labour into motion.

The sugar colonies possessed by the European nations inthe West Indies maybe compared to those precious vine-yards. Their whole produce falls short of the effectual de-mand of Europe , and can be disposed of to those who arewilling to give more than what is sufficient to pay the wholerent, profit, and wages necessary for preparing and bringingit to market, according to the rate at which they are com-monly paid by any other produce. In Cochin-china thefinest white sugar generally sells for three piastres the quin-tal, about thirteen shillings and sixpence of our money, aswe are told by Mr. Poivre,* a very careful observer of theagriculture of that country. What is there called the quintalweighs from a hundred and fifty to two hundred Paris pounds,or a hundred and seventy-five Paris pounds at a medium,which reduces the price of the hundred weight English toabout eight shillings sterling, not a fourth part of what iscommonly paid for the brown or muskavada sugars importedfrom our colonies, and not a sixth part of what is paid forthe finest white sugar. The greater part of the cultivatedlands in Cochin-china are employed in producing corn andrice, the food of the great body of the people. The respec-tive prices of corn, rice, and sugar, are there probably in thenatural proportion, or in that which naturally takes place inthe different crops of the greater part of cultivated land, andwhich recompenses the landlord and farmer, as nearly as canbe computed, according to what is usually the original ex-pense of improvement and the annual expense of cultivation.Put in our sugar colonies the price of sugar bears no such

* V»yngrs d'un l’lcilo.ioplie.i. 2