CHAPTER VII.
CONTAINS AN ACCOUNT OF THE TRADE OF THE ISLAND, PREVIOUS TO THE REDUCTION THEREOF BY THE FRENCH LAST WAR, WITH A RELATION OF THAT CIRCUMSTANCE; TOGETHER WITH THE ARTICLES OF CAPITULATION BY WHICH IT SURRENDERED.
During the space of the last five years, prior to the breaking out of the disturbances in North America, the island of Dominica was in a very flourishing situation. The port of Roseau, which was then a free port, was resorted to by traders from most of the foreign West India islands, as well as from England and North America.
The French and Spaniards purchased in this island great numbers of negroes for the supply of their settlements, together with great quantities of merchandize of the manufactures of Great Britain. These they paid for in gold and silver, or gave in exchange Muscovada and clayed sugar, coffee, cotton, gums, spices, ivory, mahogany, and dying-woods, the produce of their islands; all of which articles were exported to Great Britain in English bottoms; and thereby were productive of great advantages to the trade and navigation of the mother country.
The Americans imported thither lumber, boards, shingles, wood-hoops, staves, tobacco, flour, rice, salt-fish, horses, cattle, sheep, hogs, and feathered stock, the produce of North America. These were necessary articles for the new settlers, who paid for them in rum and molasses; or such other produce of the island as was at that time permitted to be exported in American vessels from the British West Indies.
The merchants of Dominica were then numerous, and were enabled to make regular yearly remittances, of considerable value, to their correspondents in England; and the planters of the country were furnished with the means of carrying on the settlement of their plantations with vigour.
Soon after the commencement of hostilities in America, and directly on the adoption of measures by the Americans by way of reprisal, the trade of Dominica to and with America was finally ended, and drew with it the loss of that, with the foreign West India islands.
This total ruin of trade was attended with serious consequences, fatal to the welfare of this island in particular, as being then only in a state of infancy with respect to its settlement; and it has never since been able to recover its former flourishing situation: for the merchants, tradesmen, and others, having no sale for their commodities, or work in their line of business, withdrew themselves to places where trade and commerce were more brisk; and the planters, from being deprived of the means of furnishing themselves with such articles as were immediately necessary for their new estates, were driven to abandon, or to postpone the further improvement of them.