66 RELIGION, COLONISING AND TRADE 
of the East India Company, enriched by ill-gotten 
gains, 
Though in the Old Empire the West was, roughly 
speaking, a sphere of British settlement as opposed to 
the East, which was patently a sphere of British trade, 
the existence of the navigation acts testified that 
there was no lack of trade in and with the West. But, 
until the eighteenth century was on the threshold, the 
imported wealth which tainted public life in England 
came more especially from the East—the sphere of 
trade. It has been seen that the West Indies, in spite 
of tropical conditions and climate, were a scene of early 
British colonisation no less than was the coast of 
North America; but, after the middle of the seven- 
teenth century, when sugar was becoming the staple 
product of the West Indian islands, and notably of 
Barbados, trade in the sugar-growing British islands 
began gradually but surely to dominate, if not to run 
counter to, settlement. 
The case of Jamaica stood alone. This island was 
on a much larger scale than the other West Indian 
islands and presented more openings, as a head- 
quarters of privateering and asa depotand distributing 
centre for the slave trade. It received from various 
sources constant small accessions to its white popula- 
tion. But in the smaller islands the numbers of the 
white residents tended at best to remain stationary and 
tather to dectease than to grow, both actually and 
markedly so in proportion to the number of slaves. 
[n the eighteenth century absentee planters living in 
England and leaving their West Indian estates with 
their human chattels under the control and at the mercy