374 THE LONDON WEST INDIA INTEREST July gave to the society which they formed a strength that enabled it to exert an influence over British politics far greater than that of its contemporaries. And that society has had a continuous life to the present day, through all the economic and political changes through which the West India colonies have passed. Certain definite results can be traced to this influence in the eighteenth century. Professor Pitman * has indicated its im- portance in the cases of the Molasses Act of 1733 2 and the Sugar Act of 1739, 3 and it was seen again in 1764 when the policy of the act of 1733 was further developed. 4 Yet, if these acts could have been enforced, the result to the prosperity of the New England colonies would have been serious. With the same object in view — the maintenance of the prosperity of the sugar plantations by increasing the demand for British sugar — opposition, by this time no longer uniformly successful, was organized to Pitt's Irish resolutions of 1786, 5 to the founding of a British company for trading at Sierra Leone in 1791, 6 and to the introduction of East India sugar in 1792. 7 Two other important objects of the West India interest can be traced in the eighteenth century. In time of war, constant representation to ministers of the danger to the islands, the necessity for increased squadrons and for convoys for the trade, had at any rate a considerable part in saving the islands from foreign con- quest. And in the latter years of the century from 1788 onwards the whole force of the West India interest was employed to oppose the attacks then made on the slave-trade. 8 Of this West India interest there were, as has already been indicated, two main sections, the planters resident in England and the London merchants trading to the islands. A third element must be mentioned, connected sometimes with one or the other of these two, that is the colonial agents. The first colonial agent 9 of any West India island appears to have belonged to Barbados. The history of his appointment is 1 The British West Indies, pp. 254-63, 181-3, 187. 8 6 Geo. II, cap. 13. 3 12 Geo. II, cap. 30.
- 4 Geo. Ill, cap. 15.
8 Chatham Papers, 352 (Public Record Office), Resolutions of West India Planters and Merchants, 24, 26 February, 9 March, 22 April, 6 May 1785. Also Standing Committee's Minutes, vol. i, 18, 31 May, 7, 14 June 1785. See also Holland Rose, William Pitt and the National Revival, pp. 255, 260. 6 Standing Committee's Minutes, vol. i, 11, 13, 14, 17, 18, 19, 20, 23 May 1791. ' Ibid., vol. i, 14, 20, 24, 28 February, 9-12 March, 17, 19, 20, 22, 31 March 1792. 8 A sub-committee was appointed at a meeting of 7 February 1788 to deal with this matter, and its sittings are recorded at various periods during the remainder of the century (Standing Committee's Minutes, vols, i and ii). 9 The term colonial agent has been used in its strict sense to indicate the representa- tive resident in England of the planters and merchants of the islands : in most cases the appointment of an agent of the governor can be traced earlier.
