Page:Repository of Arts, Series 1, Volume 01, 1809, January-June.djvu/102

76 again asks, "can the trader, whom ruin threatens in consequence of his own speculations, prefer the petition here ? and have bodies of men any right in this respect which the individuals have not?"

Still dealing out interrogatories, he asks, "if the has speculated wildly, why is the  economy of the husbandman to be disturbed suddenly, and at an unseasonable moment, his arm to be paralyzed, and his profits diminished?" "Had it been simply proposed," he adds, :to leave the distillers to make use of grain or sugar at their own discretion, this would have been to restore the authority of an important principle which reason and experience join in establishing; to such an enactment no objection could hate been made!"

If these observations convey any distinct idea, it is simply this: That want of skill and foresight have betrayed the West India planters and "dealers" into "erroneous" and "wild" "speculations," and that they have no right to ask, or government to grant them, relief.

That men who have not the means of information should fall into common errors upon this occasion, is not at all to be wondered at; but that men, not only possessing all the means of information, but professing to direct the judgment of others, should restate these calumnies, which have been substantially disproved before the House of Commons, and which they do not themselves credit, is (to say the least) indecorous and improper. It was my intention to have entered fully into the real causes of the distresses which the West India planters have felt, and still continue to feel, and I may at another opportunity send you some remarks upon that subject; I shall at present only trespass upon your patience a little longer, by opposing the arguments of the monthly reviewer in December, to the arguments (if they can be called arguments) of the monthly reviewer in October.

In reviewing ''An Inquiry into the Policy and Justice. of the Prohibition of the Use of Grain in the Distilleries'', by A. Hell, Esq. advocate, the reviewer observes, “That the natural effect of excess in curing itself, although the proposition is incontrovertible, it has so happened, that the addition to our imports by the capture of the Danish islands has prevented any perception of its operation. It is but justice, however, to the West India body to state, that the advocates for the discouraging plan of decreasing the produce, have looked only to one side of the question. They have felt the excess of our import, and ascribed that excess to the planter, without considering that, were the planter left at liberty, the excess would not exist. It is not the magnitude of our crops which gluts our sugar market, it is the law, which enacts, that the whole of these crops shall be sent to that market. Not only must the crops of the old British colonies be sent to the mother country, but all our conquests are subject to the same regulation. No allowance is made for the increased quantity, nor any deduction for the difficulty of export during a state of war.

"Under such a system as this, the remedy which is proposed, of