For more than a century the Dutch East India Company enjoyed the monopoly of the fine spices, comprehending nutmegs, cloves, mace, cinnamon, &c. which constituted the principal branch of the Asiatic as well as the European commerce of Holland: 360,000_lbs._ cloves were annually sent to Europe, and about 150,000_lbs._ were sold in India; 250,000_lbs._ of nutmeg, the produce of the island of Banda, used to be sold in Europe, and 100,000_lbs._ in India. In Europe also 400,000_lbs._ of cinnamon used to be brought to market, and 200,000_lbs._ consumed in India. Batavia presents a wonderful instance of the enterprise of the Dutch, who, born themselves in a marshy country, below the level of the ocean, erected a kingdom in the fifth degree of north latitude, in the most prolific part of the globe, where the fields are covered with rice, pepper, and cinnamon, and the vines bear fruit twice a year. Although this colony remains to Holland, the Dutch spice market must have very materially suffered, from the vigilance of our ships of war in various parts of the world, and particularly from the recent capture of her valuable spice ships returning home richly laden from that colony. The Dutch also carried on a large trade in rice, cotton, and pepper, and the Java coffee, which was thought to be second only to that of Mocha. The reader may, perhaps, be surprised to find that the amount of the spice exports should every year be the same. The Dutch East India Company was enabled to make this calculation in consequence of having acquired a tolerably exact knowledge of the quantity of each kind of spice that would be necessary for the consumption of the European markets, and never permitting any more to be exported. In this branch of trade they had no competition, and they were enabled to keep the price of their spices as high as they chose, by ordering what remained unsold at the price they had fixed upon it, to be burnt. Their spices gave them an influence upon the trade of the north of Europe, in consequence of their being highly prized by the different nations on the shores of the Baltic, who furnished the Dutch with their grain, hemp, flax, iron, pitch, tar, masts, planks, &c. The surrender of Curraçoa to the British arms must also be severely felt. This island was always of great importance to the Dutch, the possession and commerce of which they were very desirous of retaining and extending. The Dutch West India Company, many years since, refused to exchange it for the Spanish island of Porto Rico. The commerce of Curraçoa formerly took up yearly about fifty large ships, upon an average of 300 tons each, and the quantity of goods annually shipped from Holland amounted to 500,000_l._ and the returns nearly doubled that sum. The exports from Holland consisted of German and Dutch linens, checks, East India goods, woollen and cotton manufactures, spices, cinnamon, building materials, and many other articles of ease and luxury.