Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/154

128. add new charges, which occasion an inevitable loss in the sale.

We will suppose, for instance, a moderate traffic in sugar and cotton, such as has been already established in wool. The consumption of the former of these articles exceeds, in Spain, a hundred and twenty thousand quintals, of which Madrid expends between thirteen and fourteen thousand in chocolate, sweetmeats, and sirops. This production might be easily augmented in Peru, and would be certain of finding a sale in the mother country, which is under the necessity of making large purchases in foreign markets. Without entering, however, into a serious refutation of the supposed advantages its cultivation presents over that of any other production, and which have been so highly extolled by a modern writer, the Abbe Raynal, we will confine ourselves to a comparison between what might be undertaken, and what has already been effected by the Spanish and foreign establishments, to demonstrate the loss which the colony of Peru would sustain, on account of its greater distance, in the very production by which other colonies gain.

In the space of five years, commencing with 1748, a hundred and seventy thousand eight hundred quintals of moist sugars were exported from the Havannah, at which island the prime cost was five piastres six reals per quintal, and that of the freightage and duties, three piastres. The sale in the mother country amounted to nine piastres two reals; and, consequently, the importers gained a clear profit of four reals per quintal, or of eighty-five thousand four hundred piastres on the complete sum of the importations. The