Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 2.djvu/208

206 alone, for provisions and liquors. And they trade to Surinam in the like manner, and to the French part of Hispaniola, as also to the other French sugar islands; from whence they bring back molasses and also some money. From Jamaica they sometimes return with all money and no goods, because rum and molasses are so dear there; and all the money they can get from all parts, as also sugar, rice, tar, pitch, &c., is brought to England, to pay for the manufactures, &c., they carry home from us." The amount of the purchases thus made by the Pennsylvanians in England, he affirms, had not for many years been less than 150,000l. per annum. New York and Jersey had the same commodities to dispose of as Pennsylvania, except that they did not build so many ships; but there had lately been discovered in New York the richest copper-mine perhaps that was ever heard of, and great quantities of its produce had been brought to England. And, although this province sent fewer ships to England than some of the other colonies, yet those it did send were more richly laden, a larger portion of their cargoes being made up of furs and skins, which were obtained from the Indians. On the whole, this writer reckons New York to be at least of equal advantage to the mother country with Pennsylvania, both in respect of the money it sent us and the manufactures it took from us. Massachusetts, he goes on to state, had already at least 120,000 white inhabitants, employing about 40,000 tons of shipping in their foreign and coasting trades, making above 600 sail of one kind and another, about one-half of which traded to Europe. "Their fisheries," he adds, "have been reckoned annually to produce 230,000 quintals of dried fish, which, being sent to Portugal, Spain, and up the Mediterranean, yield twelve shillings per quintal, being 138,000l. sterling. . . . By this fishery they are said to employ at least 600,000 seamen; and, adding to the above sum the freight and commission, all earned by our own people, and reckoned at one-third more, the whole will be 172,500l., all remitted to Great Britain." To this was to be added their whale-fishery, employing about 1300 tons of shipping. They also sent to England