on the living
victims who are sinking around them.

And here, it may not be inexpedient to reconcile the existence
of so much distress, with so large an income, and so small a
population as the colony and its dependent settlements are known
to possess. The former, it has been seen, may be estimated in
round numbers at L170,000, the latter at 20,000 souls: so
that if the annual income were equally divided among the entire
population, and they were all agriculturists, and could furnish
themselves with food, (I make this supposition, because it is at
their option to become agriculturists, and it is consequently a
legitimate inference, that it is not the interest of such as have
not embraced this alteration to do so) they would each have man,
woman, and child, 8l. 10s. yearly for the purchase
of articles of foreign growth and manufacture alone. This I am
ready to allow, is comparatively a much larger sum than could be
appropriated by the inhabitants of this country to similar
purposes; and it would therefore appear on the first view,
incompatible with the doleful picture of distress which I have
drawn. If, however, the remoteness of the colony from England,
India, and China, the three principal supplying countries, be
duly considered, and the great expence of freight and insurance
unavoidably attached to so long a navigation, an expence which in
the first of these instances, is augmented in a two-fold degree,
by the entire absence of return cargoes; if it be stated that
these local disadvantages alone, render it impossible for the
importers to dispose of their merchandize for less than fifty per
cent. on the prime cost to their immediate purchasers, and that
at least three fourths of the population are obliged from the
want of ready money, to buy on long credits of these secondary
agents, who fashion their prices according to the nature and
extent of their customers' embarrassments, sometimes contenting
themselves with a second advance of fifty per cent.; but more
frequently affixing to their goods a profit of a hundred, a
hundred and fifty, and two hundred per cent.: if it be
recollected how far these grievous exactions are aggravated by
the system of vassalage just described, a system which places all
the unfortunate wretches who are reduced to it at the absolute
mercy of their rapacious landlords; if the profligate and
improvident habits and disposition of the generality of the
colonists be taken into the estimate, a