This pamphlet, authored by John Ashley, a plantation owner in Barbados and published in 1734, seeks to address the challenges faced by British sugar planters in the Caribbean following the Molasses Act of 1733. This act imposed a tax on molasses, sugar, and rum imported from non-British colonies into the North American ones. The law was largely ineffective due to widespread smuggling, so it was later amended by the Sugar Act of 1764, which contributed to tensions leading up to the American Revolution.

Ashley's pamphlet highlights the economic struggles of British planters, including heavy taxes and competition from French producers who enjoyed lower costs and direct access to foreign markets. He advocates for policy changes to improve British sugar’s competitiveness, particularly by removing the requirement to first unload sugar in British ports.

Notably, Ashley does not address the slave trade or the conditions within the sugar industry, except for one brief mention: “It is to be observed, our Sugar Commerce may be thus advanced without draining Great Britain of more Hands than she can spare, since the Labour in the Sugar Colonies is chiefly carry’d on by Negroes from Africa, (bought with British Produce and Manufactures, and Certificate Goods) and carried thither by our own Shipping.” Pamphlets like this one became increasingly common as public appeals for or against abolition as the debate around the slave trade intensified later in the eighteenth century.