PRINTED FOR KINGSBURY, PARBURY, & ALLEN, BOOKSELLERS TO THE HONOURABLE EAST-INDIA COMPANY, LEADENHALL STREET. THE ASIATIC JOURNAL FOR JULY, 1825. Original Communications, &c. &c. &c. TRADE OF THE ISLAND OF MAURITIUS. THE change which the British Government has at length consented to make in our commercial relations with the island of Mauritius, constitutes another step in that liberal system of mercantile policy to which we have lately referred with satisfaction. The delay which has occurred in acceding to the reasonable claims of the inhabitants of that colony, must not be ascribed to an insensibility on the part of the British ministry to the justice of those claims, but solely, we apprehend, to the opposition of a certain powerful class of merchants and planters, whose jealous irritability, upon every subject which has the least tendency to affect their own peculiar interests, and whose extensive influence, exercised for the protection of those separate interests, are deeply, to be lamented. It is now decided that Mauritius sugar, which is the chief product of the island, shall be importable into this country on the same terms as West-India sugar. When the island of Mauritius was wrested by us from the French Government, its agriculture, and consequently its commerce, were almost in the last stage of decay. The mismanagement of that Government, and especially the ruinous paper system, co-operated with the efforts of the British navy, and reduced, trade there to absolute inactivity. Upon the surrender of the island to the British, in the latter end of the year 1810, the causes adverted to being removed, a very different state of things began to prevail. Five years after that event, the astonished eye could scarcely perceive a trace of those misfortunes under which the island had groaned so long."* Commerce resumed its activity, and agriculture extended its products. Wealthy houses in India and England formed establishments there: London and Bengal furnished large capitals, which there was every prospect would be increased two-fold. • Petition of the inhabitants and merchants of Mauritius, 1816. Parl. Papers, April 1825, VOL. XX. Asiatic Journ. No. 115. B Such |