ing from these, and still more
from the New England and North American Colonies, are the European
settlements in the West India Islands. It is not strange, that, when
men's minds were turned to the settlement of America, different objects
should be proposed by those who emigrated to the different regions of so
vast a country. Climate, soil, and condition were not all equally
favorable to all pursuits. In the West Indies, the purpose of those who
went thither was to engage in that species of agriculture, suited to the
soil and climate, which seems to bear more resemblance to commerce than
to the hard and plain tillage of New England. The great staples of these
countries, being partly an agricultural and partly a manufactured
product, and not being of the necessaries of life, become the object of
calculation, with respect to a profitable investment of capital, like
any other enterprise of trade or manufacture. The more especially, as,
requiring, by necessity or habit, slave labor for their production, the
capital necessary to carry on the work of this production is very
considerable. The West Indies are resorted to, therefore, rather for the
investment of capital than for the purpose of sustaining life by
personal labor. Such as possess a considerable amount of capital, or
such as choose to adventure in commercial speculations without capital,
can alone be fitted to be emigrants to the islands. The agriculture of
these regions, as before observed, is a sort of commerce; and it is a
species of employment in which labor seems to form an inconsiderable
ingredient in the productive causes, since the portion of white labor is
exceedingly small, and slave labor is rather more like profit on stock
or capital than _labor_ properly so called. The individual who
undertakes an establishment of this kind takes into the account the cost
of the necessary number of slaves, in the same manner as he calculates
the cost of the land. The uncertainty, too, of this species of
employment, affords another ground of resemblance to commerce. Although
gainful on the whole, and in a series of years, it is often very
disastrous for a single year, and, as the capital is not readily
invested in other pursuits, bad crops or bad markets not only affect the
profits, but the capital itself. Hence the sudden depressions which take
place in the value of such estates.

But the great and leading observation, relative to these establishments,
remains to be mad