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Sugar and Slaves. Very rare colonial pamphlet

Currency:USD Category:Antiques Start Price:475.00 USD Estimated At:950.00 - 1,150.00 USD
Sugar and Slaves. Very rare colonial pamphlet
Sugar and Slaves. Very rare colonial pamphlet on the slave trade: Considerations on the Present Peace, As far as it is relative to the Colonies, and the African Trade. London: Printed for W. Bristow, 1763. 5 x 7 3/4 , 68 pp. Old spiderweb-marbled boards. Addressing British planters on the problem of slave traders who are also part owners of the ships which carry them, "it being their interest to keep up the price of Negroes so consigned to them, as all such advance increases their commissions...Should such destructive measures be continued, an absolute diminution of the annual income from your estates in the colonies must inevitably ensue, whether from the want of Negroes, or your purchasing them at too high a rate. In either case, it will prevent your being able to raise as much sugar...as were you to have a sufficient number of Negroes at reasonable prices...The present seems the most proper time for so great a national purpose, in order to prevent the French getting the start of you...for they are now not only making great preparations to carry on that trade themselves, but they have already made several contracts with British merchants to supply them with Negroes...." Discussing the importance of the African trade and sugar, rum, "melasses being distilled into rum in North America," tobacco, rice, cotton, "gold-dust, bees wax, elephants teeth, gum Senegal, various sorts of dying woods, and particularly Negroes for the plantations...The Negro trade on the coast of Africa, is the chief and fundamental support of the British colonies, by supplying them with that race of useful people called Negroes, to be employed in cultivating the lands. But when there is either a deficiency of them, or that they are purchaseable but at high prices, then such checks must greatly impoverish our British planters...." Mentions rebuilding of a fort on the African coast "for the defence of the Negroes in the town under it, and to protect them from their enemies of their own colour..." (p. 10). Fascinating discussion of different types of Negroes: Gold Coast, Popo, Whidah, Gambia, Calabar, Boney, and Angola. Nineteenth-century blank endleaf shaken, twentieth-century tape on spine, light foxing, else internally very good. Only one copy found online. Highly important tract.