Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 2.djvu/351

332 the soil, and the chief article of cultivation was the sugar-cane. Rival industries to those of Great Britain were impossible; the only danger that threatened British control was the loss of naval supremacy or the revolt of the negroes.

A great majority of British electors would certainly have felt no hesitation in deciding, as between the markets of the United States and of the West Indies, that if a choice must be made, good policy required the government to save at all hazards the West Indies. Both as a permanent market for manufactures and as a steady support for shipping, the West Indian commerce held the first place in British interests. This fact needed to be taken into account by the United States government before relying with certainty on the extent to which Great Britain could be controlled by the interests involved in the American trade. At the most critical moment all Jefferson's calculations might be upset by the growth of a conviction in England that the colonial system was in serious danger; and to make this chance stronger, another anxiety was so closely connected with it as to cause incessant alarm in the British mind.

The carrying-trade between the French West Indies and Europe which had thus fallen into American hands, added to the natural increase of national exports and imports, required a large amount of additional shipping; and what was more directly hostile to English interests, it drew great numbers of British sailors into the American merchant-service. The