sume annually 70,000 hogsheads, or 94,080,000 pounds of sugar; which, for 10,000,000 of people, if so many there be in Britain, comes to nine pounds and a-half of sugar to each person; or, if but 8,000,000 of people, then about eleven pounds and a-half of sugar to each person; and, as there are undoubtedly about 2,000,000 and upwards of people in Ireland, we may omit them in this computation, as there may probably be near that number in all the British dominions who use little or no sugar at all." In the present day, we may mention, our consumption of sugar is upwards of 400,000,000 of pounds, or between four and five times what it was a century ago. At that time it was computed that the shipping that went annually from Great Britain to the sugar islands amounted to about 300 sail, navigated by 4500 seamen; and that the value of the British manufactures annually exported thither was about 240,000l. On an average of the four years ending with 1732, our annual exports to Jamaica amounted to 147,675l. in value, and our imports thence to 530,499l. At this time the number of the white inhabitants of Jamaica was only 7644, which was much less than it had formerly been. "The diminution of the white people of Jamaica," Anderson observes, "was owing to the great decay of their private or illicit trade to the Spanish main; that trade having drawn thither many white people, who were wont to get rich in a few years, and then return to their mother country, and the Spanish money they got in Jamaica did at length centre in England. From Jamaica our said people privately carried all sorts of our manufactures, &c., to New Spain, which it is well known can only be legally carried thither by the flota and flotilla from Old Spain: they also earned thither great numbers of negroes." Barbadoes had a white population of 18,295; that of our Leeward Islands, consisting of St. Christopher's, Antigua, Nevis, and Montserrat, with their dependencies, Barbuda, Anguilla, Spanish Town (or Virgin Gorda), Tortola, and the rest of the Virgin Islands, was 10,262; that of Providence, the only one of the Bahamas that could yet be said to be peopled, was 500; and that of the Bermudas, 5000.
