The New Hampshire Gazette

LONDON, January 3.

It having been a great controverted point, whether, at the conclusion of a peace we should prefer the retaining of Canada or Guadaloupe: if either of them can be retained, and both of them cannot, we ought certainly to be attentive to every circumstance that can help rightly to determine us in our choice; for as both of them must be allowed acquisitions of great importance, it of course becomes a point of consequence to decide, which of them is entitled to our preference.

Guadaloupe, we have been well informed, is an Island of great fertility; well stocked, well cultivated, and of course will be the immediate producer of considerable riches to Great Britain. It may perhaps contribute towards the lowering of prices of sugar at our home markets, enable us to supply some of the neighbouring nations with that commodity, and increase our exports for the supply of necessaries for the planters and their slaves.

On the other hand, the retention of Canada will give us. It will secure to us the possession of the whole continent of North America. It will make us engrossers of all the useful furs, so extremely essential to the hat trade, and other branches of commerce. It will demolish the long complained of and pernicious monopoly of the Hudson's Bay Company; and be the means of supplying us with hats much cheaper than heretofore, and enable us to become the sole furnishers of them to all other countries of Europe. It will secure us a perceivable and good commerce with all the savage tribes settled at the back of our colonies, make us the secure suppliers of all lumber and provisions, of the French and Spanish settlements in South America, and with them perhaps of many of our manufactures, to the great employment of our people and enriching of our nation. But, above all, it will secure to us the whole noble fisheries on the northern shore of that continent, which will be a mine of wealth to this nation, and the greatest support of its marine strength, in an extended navigation and a great nursery of sailors.

These are the different advantages of the two countries that are now set in competition with one another: from the slightest view of which, common sense must give the preference on the side of North-America.

If it is urged we are already in possession of the best parts of that continent, and that the decision is to be made only betwixt Canada and Guadeloupe; we answer, that the safety of what we already have depends on our acquiring the rest; as may be judged of from the dispositions and declarations of the French, and from what we see now happening to Carolina and Georgia.

Besides, in proportion to its general strengthening of us, it will be a weakening to the French in the loss of their fisheries and nurseries of sailors; and also greatly in their navigation and in the supplies of lumber to their sugar islands, which must then become dependant on us for the furnishing them with necessaries.

If we are in want of more sugar lands, and must part with Guadaloupe, we may obtain that supply by insisting on our right to cultivate some of the neutral islands.

All these are matters of consideration that cannot be too frequently recommended. We have often done it already; and the cause of our doing it at present, is the mischief that is happening now from French influence among the Creek and Cherokee savages.