quantities of inferior rum, the common drink of that day,
regarded as essential to the health of sailors engaged in fishing
off the Grand Banks, and by far the cheapest and most effective
instrument for procuring negroes in Africa or for inducing the
western Indians to surrender their valuable furs for some
trumpery of colored cloth or spangled bracelet. All this thriving
traffic did not benefit British planters, who had molasses of
their own and a superior quality of rum which they were not
unwilling to sell.

Such traffic, since it did not benefit them, British planters
were disposed to think must be bad for England. They were
therefore willing to support Mr. Grenville's budget, which
proposed that the importation of foreign rum into any British
colony be prohibited in future; and which further proposed that
the Act of 6 George II, c. 13, be continued, with modifications
to make it effective, the modifications of chief importance being
the additional duty of twenty-two shillings per hundredweight
upon all sugar and the reduction by one half of the prohibitive
duty of sixpence on all foreign molasses imported into the
British plantations. It was a matter of minor importance
doubtless, but one to which they had no objections since the
minister made a point of it, that the produce of all the duties
which should be raised by virtue of the said act, made in the
sixth year of His late Majesty's reign, "be paid into the receipt
of His Majesty's Exchequer, and there reserved, to be from time
to time disposed of by Parliament, towards defraying the
necessary expences of defending, protecting, and securing the
British colonies and plantations in America."