England was paying for its sugar five millions more a year than the Continent.

England was paying for its sugar five millions more a year than the Continent...Two-fifths of the price of every pound of sugar consumed in England represented the cost of production, two-fifths went in revenue to the government, one-fifth in tribute to the West Indian planter.. ” [^4] Gradually, Saint Domingue (Haiti) held by France emerged as the most important sugar producer. From the standpoint of the British Prime Minister, William Pitt, this was the decisive factor.

The age of the British sugar islands was over. The West Indian system was unprofitable, and the slave-trade on which it rested, **“**instead of being very advantageous to Great Britain...is the most destructive that can well be imagined by interests.[^5] Therefore, Pitt turned to India to cultivate and produce sugar.

**“**Pill's plan was twofold: to recapture the European market with the aid of sugar from India, and to secure an international abolition of the slave-trade which would ruin Saint Domingue. If not international abolition, then British abolition. The French were so dependent on British slave traders that even a unilateral abolition by England would seriously dislocate the economy of the French colonies. **“**Pitt's plan failed for two reasons.

The importation of East India sugar, on the scale planned, was impossible owing to the high duties imposed on all sugar not the produce of the British West Indies.. Secondly, the French, Dutch and Spaniards refused.. to abolish the slave-trade. It was not difficult to see the political motives behind Pitt's cloak of humanitarianism.

Gaston-Martin, the well-known French historian of the slave-trade and the Caribbean colonies, accuses Pitt of aiming by propaganda to free the slaves 'in the name no doubt of humanity, but also to ruin French commerce.' and concludes that in this philanthropic propaganda there were economic motives. Then occurred a unique episode.

The French planters of Saint Domingue, in 1791, fearful of the consequences of French Revolution offered the islands to England; soon Windward Island followed suit; Pitt accepted the offer in 1793. Expedition after expedition was sent, unsuccessfully, to capture the island. Dr. Williams comments: “ This is of more than academic interest. Pitt could not have had Saint Domingue and abolition as well.

Without its 40,000 slave imports a year, Saint Domingue might as well have been at the bottom of the sea.