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fit is imaginary, and it is clogged with a burthen which is real.
Monopoly therefore and counter-monopoly taken together, sugar must come the dearer to sugar-eaters, instead of cheaper: to a certain degree for a constancy; and much more occasionally, when the dearness occasioned by a failure of crops in the French Colonies, is by the counter-monopoly against France, prevented from being relieved by imports from other colonies, where crops have been more favourable.
If monopoly favoured cheapness, which it does not, it would favour it to the neglect of another object, steadiness of price, which is of more importance. It is not a man's not having sugar to eat that distresses him: Crœsus, Apicius, Heliogabalus had no sugar to eat: what distresses a man, is his not being able to get what he has been used to, or not so much of it as he has been used to. The monopoly against the French Colonies, were it to contribute ever so much to the cheapness of the price, could contribute nothing to the steadiness of it: on the contrary, in consequence of the counter-monopoly it is clogged with, its tendency is to perpetuate
the
