5G2

THE NATURE AN1) CAUSES OF

they have of their own; and, in order to supply the deficiencyof their own, they endeavour to borrow as much as they canof the mother country, to whom they are, therefore, always indebt. The most common way in which the colonists con-tract this debt, is not by borrowing upon bond of the richpeople of the mother country, though they sometimes do thistoo, but by running as much in arrear to their correspondents,who supply them with goods from Europe , as those corres-pondents will allow them. Their annual returns frequentlydo not amount to more than a third, and sometimes not to sogreat a proportion of what they owe. The whole capital,therefore, which their correspondents advance to them is sel-dom returned to Britain in less than three, and sometimes notin less than four or five years. But a British capital of athousand pounds, for example, which is returned to Great Bri-tain only once in five years, can keep in constant employmentonly one-fifth part of the British industry which it couldmaintain if the whole was returned once in the year; and,instead of the quantity of industry which a thousand poundscould maintain for a year, can keep in constant employmentthe quantity only which two hundred pounds can maintainfor a year. The planter, no doubt, by the high price which hepays for the goods from Europe , by the interest upon the billswhich he grants at distant dates, and by the commission uponthe renewal of those which he grants at near dates, makes up,and probably more than makes up, all the loss which his cor-respondent can sustain by this delay. But, though he maymake up the loss of his correspondent, he cannot make upthat of Great Britain . In a trade of which the returns arevery distant, the profit of the merchant may be as great orgreater than in one in which they are very frequent and near;but the advantage of the country in which he resides, thequantity of productive labour constantly maintained there, theannual produce of the land and labour must always be muchless. That the returns of the trade to America , and still morethose of that to the West Indies , are, in general, not onlymore distant, but more irregular, and more uncertain too,than those of the trade to any part of Europe , or even of thecountries which lie round the Mediterranean sea, will readilybe allowed, 1 imagine, by every body who has any experienceof those different branches of trade.

Secondly, the monopoly of the colony trade has, in manycases, forced some part of the capital of Great Britain from