The rupture of the Peace of Amiens, in May, 1803, set Lord Sheffield again at work; and unfortunately the material lay ready to his hand. The whole subject of his discourse related to a single fact; but this fact was full of alarm to the English people. The extraordinary decrease of British tonnage in the American trade, the corresponding increase of American shipping, and the loud exultation of the Yankees over the British shipmasters were proofs of the danger which menaced England, whose existence depended on maritime strength. In the month of February, 1804, Lord Sheffield published a pamphlet,[305] which dwelt on these calamities as due to the wanton relaxation of the navigation laws and the senseless clamor of the colonies. He was answered in a pamphlet[306] written by one of the colonial agents; and the answer was convincing, so far as Lord Sheffield’s argument was concerned, but his array of statistics remained to disturb the British mind. Monroe might therefore count on having, some day, to meet whatever mischief the shipping interest of Great Britain could cause. No argument was needed to prove that the navy would support with zeal whatever demands should be made by the mercantile marine. There remained the immense influence of the West Indian colonies to consider; and if this should be brought into active sympathy with the shipowners and the royal marine against American trade, no minister in England--not even Pitt himself at the height of his power--would be strong enough to resist the combination. The staple product of the West Indian islands was sugar, and owing to several causes the profits of the planters had until 1798 been large. The insurrection of the Haytian negroes in 1792 annihilated for the time the supply of sugar from St. Domingo; prices rose in consequence, and a great increase in the number of sugar plantations naturally followed. Several of the Dutch and French islands fell into the hands of England, and adventurers flocked to them, eager to invest British capital in new sugar-fields. Under this impulse the supply again increased. Cuba, Porto Rico, Guadeloupe, and at last St. Domingo itself under Toussaint’s rule poured sugar into the market. American ships carried French and Spanish sugar to Europe until it became a drug. The high price lasted till 1798; in that year Pitt even imposed a heavy additional duty upon it as a sure source of revenue. In 1799 the effect of over-production first became apparent. During the next few years the price of sugar fell, until great suffering began to prevail in the islands, and the planters wrote piteous letters of distress to England. Their agents wrote back that the English market was flooded with colonial produce: “Send no more sugar home; give it away rather!” was their advice,--and the colonists, without the means of purchasing even the necessaries of life, supplicated government to let them send their sugar to the United States, to be exchanged for American produce.[307]