In conformity with this
plan, we may mention that sugar plantations were first formed in Barbadoes
in 1641: this, as Mr. Anderson, in his History of Commerce, justly
observes, "greatly hastened the improvement of our other islands, which
soon afterwards followed it in planting sugar to very great advantage. And,
as it was impossible to manage the planting of that commodity by white
people in so hot a climate, so neither could sufficient numbers of such be
had at any rate. Necessity, therefore, and the example of Portugal gave
birth to the negro slave trade to the coast of Guinea and it is almost
needless to add, that such great numbers of slaves, and also the increase
of white people in those islands, soon created a vast demand for all
necessaries from England, and also a new and considerable trade to Madeira
for wines to supply those islands." The immediate consequence of the spread
of the sugar culture in our West India islands was, that the ports of
London and Bristol became the great magazines for this commodity, and
supplied all the north and middle parts of Europe; and the price of the
Portuguese-Brazil sugars was reduced from 8_l_. to 2_l_. 10_s_. per cwt.
The rapid growth of the English colonies on the continent and in the
islands of America, during the seventeenth century, is justly ascribed by
Sir Josiah Child, to the emigration thither, occasioned by the persecution
of the Puritans by James I.
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