• Tradesmen in Eastern (Lower) Canada are not boarded with their employers. The charge for board and lodging to mechanics is from 10. 6d. to 13s. 6d. a-week. • Potatoes in New Brunswick are dearer than usual, owing to the general failure of the crop, and the great demand from (2.) West India Colonies. In the West Indies we possess Jamaica, Barbadoes, St. Lucia, Antigua, Grenada, Trinidad, and some other islands, exclusive of Demerara and Berbice in South America. Jamaica, by far the largest and most valuable of our insular possessions, is about 120 miles in length and 40 in mean breadth, containing about 2,800,000 acres, of which from 1,100,000 to 1,200,000 are supposed to be in cultivation. Being situated within the tropic of Cancer, the heat in the West Indies is intense, but is moderated by the sea breeze which blows regularly during the greater part of the day. The rains make the only distinction of seasons. They sometimes fall with prodigious impetuosity, giving birth to innumerable torrents, and laying all the low country under water: the trees are green the whole year round: they have no snow, no frost, and but rarely some hail. The climate is very humid; iron rusts and corrodes in a very short time; and it is this, perhaps, that renders the West Indies so unfriendly to European constitutions, and produces those malignant fevers that are so very fatal. The vegetable produc tions are numerous and valuable; but the sugar cane and the coffee plant are incomparably more important than the others, and constitute the natural riches of the islands. The West Indies are occasionally assailed by the most dreadful hurricanes, which destroy in a moment the hopes and labours of the planters, and devastate entire islands. Whole fields of sugar canes are sometimes torn up by the roots, houses are either thrown down or unroofed, and even the heavy copper boilers and stills in the works have, in numerous instances, been wrenched from the ground and battered to pieces. The rain pours down in torrents, sweeping before it every thing that comes in its way. The destruction caused by such dreadful scourges seldom fails to produce a very great scarcity, and not unfrequently famine; and we are grieved to have to add, that the severity of the distress has on several occasions been materially aggravated by a refusal on the part of the authorities to allow importation direct from the United States !* This was the case at Dominica so late as 1817. Jamaica was discovered by Columbus in 1494, and continued in possession of the Spaniards till 1655, when it was wrested from them by the English. Although it had thus been for more than a century and a half under the power of Spain, such was the deadening influence of her colonial system, that it did not, when we conquered it, contain 1,500 white inhabitants, and these were immersed in sloth and poverty. Of the many valuable articles which Jamaica soon after produced in such profusion, many were then altogether unknown; and of those that were known, such a supply only was cultivated as was required for the consumption of the inhabitants. "The Spanish settlers," says Mr. Bryan Edwards, "possessed none of the elegancies of life; nor were they acquainted even with many of those gratifications which, in civilised states, are considered necessary to its comfort and convenience. They were neither polished by social intercourse, nor improved by education; but passed their days in gloomy languor, enfeebled by sloth, and depressed by poverty. They had been for many years in a state of progressive degeneracy, and would probably in a short time have expiated the guilt of their ancestors, by falling victims themselves to the vengeance of their slaves." (Hist. West Indies, vol. i. p. 297. 8vo ed.) For a considerable number of years after we obtained possession of Jamaica, the chief exports were cocoa, hides, and indigo. Even so late as 1772, the exports of sugar amounted to only 11,000 hogsheads. In 1774, they had increased to 78,000 hogsheads of sugar, 26,000 puncheons of rum, and 6,547 bags of coffee. The American war was very injurious to the West India settlements; and they may, indeed, be said to be still suffering from its effects, as the independence of America led to the enactment of those restrictions on the importation of food, lumber, &c. that have been so very hurtful to the planters. In 1780, Jamaica was visited by a most destructive hurricane, the devastation occasioned by which produced a dreadful famine; and other hurricanes followed in the immediately succeeding years. But in 1787, a new æra of improvement began. The devastation of St. Domingo by the negro insurrection which broke at in 1792, first diminished, and in a few years almost entire y annihilated, the annual supply of 115,000 hogsheads of sugar, which France and the Continent had previously been accustomed to receive from that island. This diminution of supply, by causing a greatly increased demand for, and a cousequent rise in the price of, the sugar raised in the other islands, occasioned an extraordinary extension of cultivation. So powerful in this respect was its influence, that Jamaica, which, at an average of the 6 years preceding 1799, had produced only 83,000 hogsheads, exported, in 1801 and 1802, upwards of 286,000 hogsheads, or 143,000 a year! The same rise of price, which operated so powerfully in Jamaica, occasioned a similar though less rapid extension of cultivation in our other islands, and in Cuba, Porto Rico, and the foreign colonies generally. The vacuum caused by the cessation of the supplies from St. Domingo being thus more than filled up, a re-action commenced. The price of sugar rapidly declined; and, notwithstanding a forced market was for a while opened to it, by substituting it for malt in the distillery, prices did not attain to their former elevation On the opening of the Continental ports, in 1813 and 1814, they, indeed, rose, for a short time, to an extravagant height; but they very soon fell, involving in ruin many of the speculators upon an advance. Prices, however, continued at a pretty high level down to i818; but they sustained a material fall in the course of the following year, and were comparatively low from that period down to 1835, when the extraordinary falling off in the supplies of sugar consequent to the measures connected with the emancipation of the slaves, again occasioned a considerable rise of price. But, as already seen, this high price was entirely factitious, being wholly caused by our excluding foreign sugar from our market. Now that the sugar of Brazil, Cuba, and Java is admitted on paying reasonable duties, prices are comparatively low. And from the extraordinary facility with which sugar may be raised in the countries referred to and elsewhere, we have no idea, provided they adopt no rash or illadvised measures in relation to slaves, that its price in their markets would be likely to sustain any material or permanent increase, even though the demand for it were doubled or more. The imports of sugar from our West Indian colonies, which amounted to 4,103,800 cwts. in 1831, sunk, in 1841, to 2,151,217 cwts.! In 1850 they amounted to 2,589,420 do. The devastation of St. Domingo gave the same powerful stimulus to the growth of coffee in the other West Indian colonies, that it did to the growth of sugar; and owing to the extraordinary increase in the demand for coffee in this and other European countries, the supply went on increasing till it was checked by the influence of the measures relating to slavery. In 1752, for example, only 60,000 lbs. of coffee were exported from Jamaica; in 1775 the export amounted to 440,000 lbs.; in 1797 it had increased to 7,931,621 lbs. ; and in 1832, when it had attained its maximum, the exports to England only amounted to 19,405,933 lbs. Such, however, and so rapid has been their subsequent decline, that in 1850 the exports to England from Jamaica amounted to only 4,156,666 lbs. (See opposite.) It is stated in a report by a committee of the Assembly of Jamaica, that 15,000 negroes perished between the latter end of 1780 and the beginning of 1787, through famine occasioned by hurricanes and the prohibition of importation from the United States. (Edwards's West Indies, vol. ii. p. 515.) Account of the Quantities of Sugar, Molasses, Rum, Coffee, and Cocoa, imported into the U. K. from the West Indies and British Guiana, during each of the under-mentioned 10 Years ending with 1850 - Parl. Paper, No. 264, Sess. 1851. Colonies from which imported SUGAR Antigua Earbadoes Dominica Grenada 518,541 529,935 742,567 572,583 751,539 627,322 633,182 575,022 Montserrat 26,137) 16,2611 12,205 12,547 11,265 39 5,316 Nevis 26,714 8,272 42,334 19,093 24,627 15,518 St. Christopher 80,358 93,652 70,717 St. Lucia 72,376 61,154 67,404 53,903 144,116 159,295! 139,581 Tobago Tortola 53,440 760,376 364,152 2,434 391,673 1,607 2 522,390 570,084 Berbice 126,485 93,157 95,810 120,575 Total 122,088 55,215 4,103,800 3,524,209 2,214,764 2,453,037 2,857,703 2,152,155 3,202,774,797,376 2,844,078 2,589,420 73,307 113,143 133,144, 815 516,478 62 477 472,750 67,05 75,59% 1,798 778 63,007 7,308 14,077 21,128 51,828 22,205 31,435 36,854 14,980 18,58 328,471 248,524 159,747 112,626 78,390 99,261 231.285 189.681 92,340 83,772 3,522,463 2,450,272 1,294,3371,146,886 1,745,685 1,487,214 2,140,521 2,280,258 1,778,650 1,585,696 22,806 4,361 3,067 2,385. 687 21,819 15,079 25,285 10,444 39.725 15,987 1,006 131,984 80,792 111,743 64,731 190,535 82.9.50 4,748 14,081 28,620 18,500 82,626 83,001 127,724 188,494 133,364 295 128 4,110 60,394 40,958 42.763 21,43 261 964 4,580 88,558 63,912 264,828 2,473 191,247 50,448 709 277.278 172,952 139,736 125,756 Bhamas. 59 Bermudas 237 351 15. 13 375 27 6 1,667 150,002 85,869 33,528 6 2 Demerara Berbice Total 2,532,970 1,875,245 1,464,970 874,042 1,535,794 855,197 1,757,624 2,271,117 1,806,116 1,613,338 51,257 131,952 247,893, 76,049 10,341 7,844,157 5,453,300 3,780,979 2,506,625 3,955,076 2,826,455 5,271,941 5,659,350 4,330,650 3,579,176| |