"Each mill, with steam engine and kettles, &c. will cost $5,000.
"There are employed on the sugar plantations (independent of the cotton estates) 22,000 horses—value $1,500,000. These are to be renewed every seven years, or it will require $200,000 a year to supply the market. There were purchased in 1827-8, 2,500 horses—in 1828-9, 2,800—in 1829-30, 3,000 horses.
"Of the 100,000 hogsheads of sugar made in Louisiana, 50,000 hogsheads are transported up the Mississippi in steam-boats, for the supply of the Western States, who obtain it in exchange for their productions. Here, then, there is an internal trade of five millions, created in the Western States.
"The remainder of the sugar is transported coastwise by our vessels, to the North, to restore the balance of trade with that quarter, as well as with foreign nations.
"Thus every interest of agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and navigation, connects itself intimately with this object.
"The sugar is indeed made in Louisiana, but a portion of the money on which the establishments are founded, the whole of the labour by which it is produced, the chief supply of food, and the entire amount of clothing, and the transportation of the article, are furnished from the different states."
A prospect is reasonably held out of the reduction of the price of the article, by continuing the protection, to a point as low as need be desired, or could be obtained if we were to depend upon a foreign supply.
"When the estates are paid for, and the general diminution of value in other things takes place, with the improvements in machinery and other causes, sugar will be profitably made at 4 cents, and that is about the price at which we purchase it now in the islands: at that price we can, after supplying this country, enter into the general market of the Baltic, Mediterranean, and Black Seas."
On this part of the case a more satisfactory ground is taken; and it is made manifest, by authentic documents, that since the production of sugar in Louisiana, with the duties by which it is protected, a reduction has taken place in the price of the article, of one-half. The results of the tables annexed to the letter are thus given.
"The protecting duty on sugar, besides opening a new field of industry, diverting a large portion of labour from other objects, maintaining the value of all the slave property in the country, and supplying the people with an article of general use and prime necessity, has actually diminished the price one-half in twelve years.