s at Senegal, colonial produce at considerably less
expense than our West-India cultivation. The voyage, also, is not
half the distance; so that the continental market for the sale of
West-India produce will be shortly supplied from Senegal, from
229 whence it is more than probable that colonial produce will be
imported to Europe at little more than half the expense of
importing it from the West Indies: thus Great Britain may be driven
out of the market for colonial produce, except for what may be
sufficient for her own domestic supply.

[Footnote 165: Many naval officers concur in thinking, that to
suppress the slave trade, by interrupting the ships, would
employ all the navy of Great Britain; and entail a war-expense
on the nation; besides the enormous expense that will be
necessarily incurred by the various commissions dispatched to
Sierra Leone, Havannah, &c. &c. for the adjudication of
slave-causes. To which may be added, our expensive presents to
Spain and Portugal, to induce those powers to coalesce in the
abolition; which there is too much reason to apprehend will be
evaded by the subjects of those powers.]

This has been a favourite scheme of the French, who have now begun
to taste the fruits of it: they have had it in view and in
operation _ever since we gave them possession of Senegal_. It was
the system of her late Emperor, Bonaparte, suggested to him by the
arch and brilliant genius of Talleyrand, to indemnify the loss of
St. Domingo.

Moreover, the French, who are cultivating the territory of Senegal
with indefatigable industry, will be, in a few years, not only able
to supply the continental markets of Europe with colonial produce,
but they will become masters of North Africa, establish another
Ceuta at the African promontory of the Cape de Verd, and, in the
event of a war, annoy incalculably our East-India trade, and
enhance the price of East-India produce in the British dominions;
whilst they will, by the aid of the Americans, who will be always
ready to assist them, form a depot for East-India goods at the Cape
de Verd, and from thence introduce them into Africa and France, to
the almost total exclusion of Great Britain. If we are to prevent
these events from taking place, we must adopt d