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THE NATUHE AND CAUSES 01’

works of this kind have been given up, and there are at pre-sent, October, 1773, I am assured, not above two or threeremaining in the island. At present, however, by an indul-gence of the custom-house, clayed or refined sugar, if reducedfrom loaves into powder, is commonly imported as Mus-kovado. —-

While Great Britain encourages in America the manufac-tures of pig and bar iron, by exempting them from duties towhich the like commodities are subject when imported fromany other country, she imposes an absolute prohibition uponthe erection of steel furnaces and slit-mills in any of her Ame-rican plantations. She will not suffer her colonies to work inthose more refined manufactures even for their own con-sumption; but insists upon their purchasing of her merchantsand manufacturers all goods of this kind which they haveoccasion for.

She prohibits the exportation from one province to anotherby water, and even the carriage by land upon horseback orin a cart, of hats, of wools and woollen goods, of the produceof America ; a regulation which effectually prevents the es-tablishment of any manufacture of such commodities for dis-tant sale, and confines the industry of her colonists in thisway to such coarse and household manufactures, as a privatefamily commonly makes for its own use, or for that of someof its neighbours in the same province.

To prohibit a great people, however, from making all thatthey can of every part of their own produce, or from employ-ing their stock and industry in the way that they judge mostadvantageous to themselves, is a manifest violation of themost sacred rights of mankind. Unjust, however, as suchprohibitions may be, they have not hitherto been very hurt-ful to the colonies. Land is still so cheap, and, conse-quently, labour so dear among them, that they can importfrom the mother country almost all the more refined or moreadvanced manufactures cheaper than they could make themfor themselves. Though they had not, therefore, been pro-hibited from establishing such manufactures, yet in their pre-sent state of improvement, a regard to their own interestwould, probably, have prevented them from doing so. Intheir present state of improvement, those prohibitions, per-haps, without cramping their industry, or restraining it fromany employment to which it would have gone of its own ac-cord, are only impertinent badges of slavery imposed upon