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thus levied upon them, they could not get the goods they want, upon as good terms from you as elsewhere. Your own vassals could not quit your market, except in as far as smuggling would enable them, for by the supposition they have no other. Upon foreigners the tax is an experiment, and what you risk by the experiment is, the temporary distress to individuals proportioned to the decrease, whatever it be, of that branch of trade: for as to the absolute sum of trade, or to speak more distinctly, of national wealth, it suffers nothing, as you have seen, beyond the amount of the relative and momentary decrease: so that the whole produce of this tax is so much clear gain to the revenue, for which nothing is paid or so much as risked, beyond the above-mentioned momentary and contingent distress to individual traders. Upon your own vassals there is nothing for experiment to ascertain: you have them in a jail, and you set what price you please on their existence; only you must keep the door well locked, and if the jail be a large one, this may be no such easy matter. In Guadalupe, Martinico, and St. Domingo, what could the expence amount to? the prisoners all refractory, and making holes and beating down doors and
