CHAPTER III. Capital necessary in the settlement or purchase of a sugar plantation of a given extent.—The lands, buildings, and stock separately considered.-Particulars and cost.Gross returns from the property.-Annual disbursements.-Net profits. Various contingent charges not taken into the account.-Difference not commonly attended to, in the mode of estimating the profits of an English estate, and one in the West Indies.-Insurance of West India estates in time of war, and other occasional deductions.—The question, why the cultivation of the Sugar Islands has increased under so many discouragements, considered and discussed. A SUGAR plantation consists of three great parts; the lands, the buildings, and the stock: but before I proceed to discriminate their relative proportions and value, it may be proper to observe, that the business of sugar planting is a sort of adventure in which the man that engages must engage deeply. There is no medium, and very seldom the possibility of retreat. A British country gentleman, who is content to jog on without risk on the moderate profits of his own moderate farm, will startle to hear, that it requires a capital of no less than thirty thousand pounds sterling to embark in this employment with a fair prospect of advantage. To elucidate this position, it must be understood, that the annual contingencies of a small or moderate plantation, are very nearly equal to those of an estate of three times the magnitude. A property, for instance, producing annually one hundred hogsheads of sugar of sixteen cwt. has occasion for similar white servants, and for buildings and utensils of nearly the same extent and number, as a plantation yielding from two to three hundred such hogsheads, with rum in proportion. In speaking of capital, I mean either money, or a solid well established credit; for there is this essential difference attending loans obtained on landed estates in Great Britain, and those which are advanced on the credit of West Indian plantations, that an English mortgage is a marketable security which a West Indian mortgage is not. In England, if a mortgagee calls for his money, other persons are ready to advance it: now this seldom happens in regard to property in the West Indies. The credit obtained by the sugar planter is commonly given by men in trade, on the prospect of speedy returns and considerable advantage; but as men in trade seldom find it convenient to place their money out of their reach for any length of time, the credit which they give is oftentimes suddenly withdrawn, and the ill-fated planter compelled, on this account, to sell his property at much less than half its first cost. The credit therefore of which I speak, considered as a capital, must not only be extensive but permanent. Having premised thus much, the application of which will hereafter be seen, I shall employ my present inquiries in ascertaining the fair and wellestablished prices at which a sugar estate may at this time be purchased or created, and the profits which may honestly and reasonably be expected from a given capital so employed; founding my estimate on a plantation producing, one year with another, two hundred hogsheads of sugar of sixteen cwt, and one hundred and thirty puncheons of rum of one hundred and ten gallons each: an estate of less magnitude, I conceive, for the reasons before given, to be comparatively a losing concern. Afterwards I shall endeavour to account for the eagerness which has been shewn by many persons to adventure in this line of cultivation.-I begin then with the Vol. III. LANDS. On a survey of the general run of the sugar estates in Jamaica, it is found, that the land in canes commonly constitutes one-third of the plantation; another third is appropriated to pasturage and the cultivation of provisions, such as plantains, (a hearty and wholesome food), eddoés, yams, potatoes, cassada, corn, and other vegetable esculents peculiar to the country and climate; and which, with salted fish, supplied the negroes weekly, and small stock, as pigs and poultry, of their own raising, make their chief support, and in general it is ample. The remaining third is reserved in native woods, for the purpose of furnishing timbers for repairing the various buildings, and supplying firewood for the boiling and distilling-houses, in addition to the cane-trash, and for burning lime and bricks. As therefore a plantation yielding, on an average, two hundred hogsheads of sugar annually, requires, as I conceive, not less than three hundred acres to be planted in canes, the whole extent of such a property must be reckoned at nine hundred acres. I am persuaded that the sugar plantations in Jamaica making those returns, commonly exceed, rather than fall short of this estimate; not, as hath been ignorantly asserted, from a fond and avaricious propensity in the proprietors to engross more land than is necessary; but be |