Dutch dependencies in that quarter of the world, which they supplied, as we have seen, to a considerable extent, both with agricultural produce and with shipping, and from which they were themselves furnished in return with sugar, rum, and other articles of which the English islands maintained that they had by law a monopoly in regard to all the dominions of the mother country. The dispute produced several publications on both sides—among others, that entitled "The Importance of the Plantations," noticed above; and at last, in 1731, a bill was brought into Parliament, which passed the Commons, absolutely prohibiting, under forfeiture of ship as well as cargo, the importation into any part of English America of sugar, rum, or molasses grown in the plantations of any foreign power. This bill was allowed to drop in the House of Lords; but, two years after, the matter was settled by an act "for the better securing and encouraging the trade of his majesty's sugar colonies in America," which, while it granted a drawback upon the re-exportation from Great Britain of West India sugar, imposed certain duties upon the importation into the American settlements of the produce of the foreign plantations.[1] According to the preamble of the act our West India islands were at this time far from being in a thriving condition: their welfare and prosperity are asserted to be of the greatest consequence and importance to the trade, navigation, and strength of the kingdom; but of late years, it is added, the planters had fallen under such great discouragements as to be "unable to improve or carry on the sugar-trade upon an equal footing with the foreign sugar colonies without some advantage and relief be given to them from Great Britain." From an account of our West India Islands laid before the House of Lords by the Board of Trade in 1734, we learn various particulars of their trade and general condition. All our sugar islands together were reckoned to produce annually, on an average, 85,000 hogsheads, or 1,200,000 cwt., of sugar ; "of which," adds Anderson, in his comment on the report, "Great Britain was thought to con-
- ↑ Stat. 6 Geo. II. c. 13.
