Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 3.djvu/464

 448 COMMERCIAL DESCRIPTION OF employs 32,100 tons of shipping, and 3210 sea- men; — the vaunted spice trade 700 tons, and 80 seamen ; the tonnage is thus 46 times greater, the hands employed 40 times greater. The value of the fishery is L. 1070,000, that of the spices, at three times their natural price, only L. 120,000, or little more than a ninth part of the value of the fishery. This amount for the fishery is obtained by the labour of 3210 men, among the boldest, most active, and hardy, that human insti- tutions are capable of breeding. The spices are ob- tained through the enslaving of a population of 46,000, or with the labour of 11,500 persons, taking the labouring population at about a fourth of that number,* who, with perhaps a million more, are by means of it robbed of the most ordinary rights of human nature, and kept in slavery and barbarism to insure an unworthy and contemptible object. It will appear from this, and allowing that spices bring a monopoly price equal to three times their natural value, that the labourof one Englishman is equal to that of 96 natives of the Spice Islands, with the aid of the productive powers of the soil to boot. The value of the ordinary labour of a civi- lized European over an Asiatic, wherever there is an opportunity of making a fair comparison, is no Isles.
 * This is the actual population of Amboyna and the Banda