or inducing the western
Indians to surrender their valuable furs for some trumpery of colored
cloth or spangled bracelet. All this thriving traffic did not benefit
British planters, who had molasses of their own and a superior quality
of rum which they were not unwilling to sell.

Such traffic, since it did not benefit them, British planters were
disposed to think must be bad for England. They were therefore willing
to support Mr. Grenville's budget, which proposed that the importation
of foreign rum into any British colony be prohibited in future; and
which further proposed that the Act of 6 George II, c. 13, be continued,
with modifications to make it effective, the modifications of chief
importance being the additional duty of twenty-two shillings per
hundredweight upon all sugar and the reduction by one half of the
prohibitive duty of sixpence on all foreign molasses imported into the
British plantations. It was a matter of minor importance doubtless, but
one to which they had no objections since the minister made a point of
it, that the produce of all the duties which should be raised by virtue
of the said act, made in the sixth year of His late Majesty's reign, "be
paid into the receipt of His Majesty's Exchequer, and there reserved,
to be from time to time disposed of by Parliament, towards defraying the
necessary expences of defending, protecting, and securing the British
colonies and plantations in America."

With singularly little debate, honorable and right honorable members
were ready to vote this new Sugar Act, having the minister's word for
it that it would be enforced, the revenue thereby much improved, and a
sudden stop put to the long-established illicit traffic with the
foreign islands, a traffic so beneficial to the northern colonies, so
prejudicial to the Empire and the pockets of planters. Thus it was that
Mr. Grenville came opportunely to the aid of the Spanish authorities,
who for many years had employed their guarda costas in a vain effort to
suppress this very traffic, conceiving it, oddly enough, to be injurious
to Spain and highly advantageous to Britain.

It may be that the Spanish authorities regarded the West Indian trade
as a commercial system rather than as a means of revenue. This aspect of
the matter, the commercial effects of his measures, Mr. Grenville at all
events managed not to take sufficiently into account, which was rather
odd, seeing that he professed to hold the commercial s