I suppose that some of these sugars may have been carried first to St Eustatia, and brought from thence to Holland, and some others may have been purchased in the ports of France, and imported raw from thence. I do not know that Dutch vessels were permitted to purchase sugars in the French Islands, and export them from thence. This matter deserves to be examined to the bottom. If France has not sugar-houses for the refinement of her own sugars, but is obliged to carry them, or to permit their being carried, to Amsterdam and Rotterdam for manufacture, why should she not be willing, that the same sugars should be carried by Americans to Boston, New York, and Philadelphia? Surely France has no predilection for Holland rather than America. But what is of more weight, all the sugars, which America takes, will be paid for in articles more advantageous to the Islands, and to France, than the pay that is made by the Dutch. If any sugars refined in Holland are afterwards sold in France, surely it would be more for the interest of France, or rather less against her interests, to have the same sugars refined in America, and afterwards sold in France, because the price of them would be laid out by us in France. There is this difference between us and the Dutch, and all other nations, we spend in Europe all the profits we make and more, the others do not. But if the French sugars, refined in Holland, are afterwards sold in other parts of Europe, it would be just as well that we should sell them. We have sugar-houses as well as the Dutch, and ours ought not to be more obnoxious to French policy or commerce than theirs. Sugars are a great article. There is a great consumption in America. It is not the interest of any nation, that has sugars to sell, to lessen the consumption there. All such nations should favor that consumption, in order to multiply purchasers, and quicken the competition, by which the price is raised. None of these nations then will wish to prevent our having sugar, provided we offer as high, or a higher price. How they will be able to arrange their plans, so that we may have enough for our own consumption, without having more, without having some for exportation, I do not know.