But it so happens, that many of the
principal proprietors of the sugar plantations
reside in Great Britain. Their rents are remitted
to them in sugar and rum, the produce
of their estates. The sugar and rum which
the West India merchants purchase in those
colonies upon their own account, are not equal
in value to the goods which they annually sell
there. A balance, therefore, must necessarily
he paid to them in gold and silver, and this
balance, too, is generally found.
The difficulty and irregularity of payment
from the different colonies to Great Britain,
have not been at all in proportion to the greatness
or smallness of the balances which were
respectively due from them. Payments have,
in general, been more regular from the northern
than from the tobacco colonies, though
the former have generally paid a pretty large
balance in money, while the latter have either
paid no balance, or a much smaller one. The
difficulty of getting payment from our different
sugar colonies has been greater or less
in proportion, not so much to the extent of
the balances respectively due from them, as to
the quantity of uncultivated land which they
contained; that is, to the greater or smaller
temptation which the planters have been under
of over-trading, or of undertaking the
settlement and plantation of greater quantities
of waste land than suited the extent of their
capitals. The returns from the great island
of Jamaica, where there is still much uncultivated
land, have, upon this account, been, in
general, more irregular and uncertain than
those from the smaller islands of Barbadoes,
Antigua, and St. Christopher's, which have,
for these many years, been completely cultivated,
and have, upon that account, afforded
less field for the speculations of the planter.
The new acquisitions of Grenada, Tobago,
St. Vincent's, and Dominica, have opened a
new field for speculations of this kind; and
the returns from those islands have of late been
as irregular and uncertain as those from the
great island of Jamaica.
It is not, therefore, the poverty of the colonies
which occasions, in the greater part of
them, the present scarcity of gold and silver
money. Their great demand for active and
productive stock makes it convenient for them
to have as little dead stock as possible, and
disposes them, upon that account, to content
themselves with a cheaper, though less commodious
instrument of commerce, than gold
and silver. They are thereby enabled to convert
the value of that gold and silver into the
instruments of trade, into the materials of clothing,
into household furniture, and into the
iron work necessary for building and extending
their settlements and plantations. In
those branches of business which cannot be
transacted without gold and silver money, it
appears, that they can always find the necessary
quantity of those metals; and if they
frequently do not find it, their failure is generally
the effect, not of their necessary poverty,
but of their unnecessary and excessive
enterprise. It is not because they are poor
that their payments are irregular and uncertain,
but because they are too eager to become
excessively rich. Though all that part of the
produce of the colony taxes, which was over
and above what was necessary for defraying
the expense of their own civil and military
establishments, were to be remitted to Great
Britain in gold and silver, the colonies have
abundantly wherewithal to purchase the requisite
quantity of those metals. They would
in this case be obliged, indeed, to exchange a
part of their surplus produce, with which they
now purchase active and productive stock, for
dead stock. In transacting their domestic
business, they would be obliged to employ a
costly, instead of a cheap instrument of commerce;
and the expense of purchasing this
costly instrument might damp somewhat the
vivacity and ardour of their excessive enterprise
in the improvement of land. It might
not, however, be necessary to remit any part
of the American revenue in gold and silver.
It might be remitted in bills drawn upon, and
accepted by, particular merchants or companies
in Great Britain, to whom a part of the
surplus produce of America had been consigned,
who would pay into the treasury the
American revenue in money, after having
themselves received the value of it in goods;
and the whole business might frequently be
transacted without exporting a single ounce
of gold or silver from America.
It is not contrary to justice, that both Ireland
and America should contribute towards
the discharge of the public debt of Great Britain.
That debt has been contracted in support
of the government established by the Revolution;
a government to which the protestants
of Ireland owe, not only the whole authority
which they at present enjoy in their
own country, but every security which they
possess for their liberty, their property, and
their religion; a government to which several
of the colonies of America owe their present
charters, and consequently their present constitution;
and to which all the colonies of
America owe the liberty, security, and property,
which they have ever since enjoyed.
That public debt has been contracted in the
defence, not of Great Britain alone, but of
all the different provinces of the empire. The
immense debt contracted in the late war in
particular, and a great part of that contracted
in the war before, were both properly contracted
in defence of America.
By a union with Great Britain, Ireland
would gain, besides the freedom of trade,
other advantages much more important, and
which would much more than compensate any
increase of taxes that might accompany that
union. By the union with England, the