THE WEALTH OF NATIONS. 541

sumption of wood as a furnace, or which can contribute somuch to the clearing of a country overgrown, with it.

The tendency of some of these regulations to raise thevalue of timber in America , and thereby to facilitate theclearing of the laud, was neither, perhaps, intended nor un-derstood by the legislature. Though their beneficial effects,however, have been in this respect accidental, they have notupon that account been less real.

The most perfect freedom of trade is permitted betweenthe British colonies of America and the West Indies , both inthe enumerated and in the non-enumerated commodities.Those colonies are now become so populous and thriving,that each of them finds in some of the others a great and ex-tensive market for every part of its produce. All of themtaken together, they make a great internal market for theproduce of one another.

The liberality of England, however, towards the trade ofher colonies, has been confined chiefly to what concerns themarket for their produce, either in its rude state, or in whatmay be called the very first stage of manufacture. The moreadvanced or more refined manufactures even of the colonyproduce, the merchants and manufacturers of Great Britain choose to reserve to themselves, and have prevailed upon thelegislature to prevent their establishment in the colonies,sometimes by high duties, and sometimes by absolute prohi-bitions.

While, for example, Muskovado sugars from the British plantations, pay upon importation only (5s. 4 d. the hundredweight; white sugars pay 1/. Is. le/.; and refined, eitherdouble or single, in loaves 41. 2s. 5-fod. When those highduties were imposed, Great Britain was the sole, and shestill continues to be the principal market to which the sugars°f the British colonies could be exported. They amountedtherefore, to a prohibition, at first of claying or refining sugarlor any foreign market, and at present of claying or refiningit tor the market, which takes oil', perhaps, more than nine-tenths ot the whole produce. The manufacture of claying orrefining sugar-accordingly, though it has flourished in all thesugar colonies of France , lias been little cultivated in any ofthose of England, except for the market of the colonies them-selves. While Grenada was in the hands of the French , there'yas a refinery of sugar, by claying at least, upon almost every1 miration, bince it fell into those of the English , almost all