Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 3.djvu/408

 392 COMMERCIAL DESCRIPTION OF the decline of the clove trade. Production and consumption naturally declined, because, by the arts of the monopoly, the price was so exorbitantly enhanced, that the consumer could not afford to buy. The production of the five Moluccas, which, in the best times, was 3,5G4,000 lbs. fell, in the early period of the Dutch administration, to 2,3 IG, 600 lbs. The consumption of Europe, which, in 1621, was 450,000 lbs., was, on an ave- rage, from 1786 to 1791, only 553,000 lbs., and from 1814 to 1818 only 365,000 lbs. It is not enough to say that the price fell numerically. It ought to have fallen in the proportion of other ar- ticles likely to be substituted for cloves, or likely to supplant them. It ought to have fallen in the proportion of black and long pepper, pimento, gin- ger, &c. the consumption of all of which has, in the same time, greatly increased. If cloves and pep- per were, the one 8s. per pound, and the other 3s. 6d. previous to the discovery of the new route to India, and pepper fell afterwards from competi- tion to Is. 8d. ; cloves ought to have fallen to 3s, 9 -Id., instead of which they were 6s. If the clove trade had partaken of the freedom of which the pepper trade has of late years received, when the price of it has fallen to 7d. per pound, cloves ought legitimately to have fallen to Is. 4d. per pound. It is not true that the actual consumption of cloves has diminished in England, but in reference to