Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 3.djvu/398

382 COMMERCIAL DESCRIPTION OF the grower the whole value of his produce, and to the consumer the cheapest commodity. It will be no difficult matter to prove, that the diminished consumption of cloves, which has been absurdly and inconsiderately ascribed to a caprice of fashion, has, in fact, been principally owing to an enhance- ment of their cost, — that the clove is naturally a cheap and abundant production, and that a free trade in it will be inevitably attended by a great increase of consumption. I shall do this by furnishing a calculation of the natural price of cloves, and corroborate it by a review of the prices of the commodity in the different periods of the trade. The natural price of the clove may be best understood by a comparative statement of the la- bour of growing it, with that of articles of the same countries, the cost of which has been ascer- tained by free culture, — pepper and coffee are those articles with which it is most natural to in- stitute a comparison. In the existing relation' of land to capital, the lands required for all three af- ford no renty on account of their abundance. This is more peculiarly applicable to the clove, perhaps, than to the others. An acre of pepper vines will yield II6I lbs. of clean pepper ; an acre of cloves only 375 lbs. If the expence of growing cloves, therefore, were in proportion to the produce of a given area of land, they ought to be nearly three times the price of pepper. This, however, is by