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First, The market of Europe has become gradually more and more extenfive. Since the discovery of America, the greater part of Europe has been much improved. England, Holland, France and Germany; even Sweden, Denmark, and Ruffia, have all advanced confiderably, both in agriculture and in manufactures. Italy feems not to have gone backwards. The fall of Italy preceded the conqueft of Peru. Since that time it seems rather to have recovered a little. Spain and Portugal, indeed, are fuppofed to have gone backwards. Portugal, however, is but a very small part of Europe, and the declenfion of Spain is not, perhaps, fo great as is commonly imagined. In the beginning of the fixteenth century, Spain was a very poor country, even in comparison with France, which has been fo much improved fince that time. It was the well-known remark of the Emperor Charles V., who had travelled fo frequently through both countries, that every thing abounded in France, but that every thing was wanting in Spain. The increafing produce of the agriculture and manufactures of Europe muft neceffarily have required a gradual increase in the quantity of filver coin to circulate it; and the increasing number of wealthy individuals must have required the like increase in the quantity of their plate and other ornaments of filver.

Secondly, America is itself a new market for the produce of its own filver mines; and as its advances in agriculture, induftry, and population, are much more rapid than those of the most

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thriving countries in Europe, its demand muft CHAP. increase much more rapidly. The English colonies are altogether a new market, which partly for coin and partly for plate, requires a conti nually augmenting fupply of filver through a great continent where there never was any demand before. The greater part too of the Spanish and Portuguese colonies are altogether new markets. New Granada, the Yucatan, Paraguay, and the Brazils were, before difcovered by the Europeans, inhabited by favage nations, who had neither arts nor agriculture. A confiderable degree of both has now been introduced into all of them. Even Mexico and Peru, though they cannot be confidered as altogether new markets, are certainly much more extenfive ones than they ever were before. After all the wonderful tales which have been published concerning the fplendid state of thofe countries in ancient times, whoever reads, with any degree of fober judgment, the history of their first discovery and conqueft, will evidently difcern that, in arts, agriculture, and commerce, their inhabitants were much more ignorant than the Tartars of the Ukraine are at prefent. Even the Peruvians, the more civilized nation of the two, though they made ufe of gold and filver as orna ments, had no coined money of any kind. Their whole commerce was carried on by barter, and there was accordingly fcarce any divifion of labour among them. Thofe who cultivated the ground were obliged to build their own houses, to make their own houshold furniture, their own clothes,

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The few artificers among them are faid to have been all maintained by the fovereign, the nobles, and the priests, and were probably their servants or flaves. All the ancient arts of Mexico and Peru have never furnished one fingle manufacture to Europe. The Spanish armies, though they fcarce ever exceeded five hundred men, and frequently did not amount to half that number, found almoft every-where great difficulty in procuring fubfiftence. The famines which they are faid to have occafioned almoft wherever they went, in countries too, which at the fame time are reprefented as very populous and well cultivated, fufficiently demonftrate that the story of this populoufnefs and high cultivation is in a great measure fabulous. The Spanish colonies are under a government in many refpects lefs favourable to agriculture, improvement, and population, than that of the English colonies. They feem, however, to be advancing in all these much more rapidly than any country in Europe. In a fertile foil and happy climate, the great abun dance and cheapnefs of land, a circumstance common to all new colonies, is, it feems, fo great an advantage, as to compenfate many defects in civil government. Frezier, who visited Peru in 1713, reprefents Lima as containing between twenty-five and twenty-eight thousand inhabitants. Ulloa, who refided in the fame country between 1740 and 1746, reprefents it as containing more than fifty thoufand. The difference in their accounts of the populouf

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ness of several other principal towns in Chili and c HAP. Peru is nearly the fame; and as there feems to be no reason to doubt of the good information of either, it marks an increase which is fcarce inferior to that of the English colonies. America, therefore, is a new market for the produce of its own filver mines, of which the demand muft increase much more rapidly than that of the most thriving country in Europe.

Thirdly, The Eaft Indies is another market for the produce of the filver mines of America, and a market which, from the time of the first disco. very of thofe mines, has been continually taking off a greater and a greater quantity of filver. Since that time, the direct trade between America and the Eaft Indies, which is carried on by means of the Acapulco fhips, has been conti nually augmenting, and the indirect intercourfe by the way of Europe has been augmenting in a ftill greater proportion. During the fixteenth century, the Portuguese were the only European nation who carried on any regular trade to the East Indies. In the last years of that century the Dutch began to encroach upon this monopoly, and in a few years expelled them from their principal fettlements in India. During the greater part of the last century those two nations divided the most confiderable part of the East India trade between them; the trade of the Dutch continually augmenting in a still greater proportion than that of the Portuguefe declined. The English and French carried on fome trade

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BOOK with India in the laft century, but it has been greatly augmented in the course of the present. The Eaft India trade of the Swedes and Danes began in the courfe of the prefent century. Even the Mufcovites now trade regularly with China by a fort of caravans which go over land through Siberia and Tartary to Pekin. The East India trade of all thefe nations, if we except that of the French, which the last war had well nigh annihilated, has been almoft continually augmenting. The increafing confumption of Eaft India goods in Europe is, it seems, fo great, as to afford a gradual increafe of employment to them all. Tea, for example, was a drug very little ufed in Europe before the middle of the last century. At prefent the value of the tea annually imported by the English East India Company, for the ufe of their own countrymen, amounts to more than a million and a half a year; and even this is not enough; a great deal more being conftantly finuggled into the country from the ports of Holland, from Gottenburg in Sweden, and from the coaft of France too, as long as the French Eaft India Company was in profperity. The confumption of the porcelain of China, of the spiceries of the Moluccas, of the piece goods of Bengal, and of the innumerable other articles, has increased very nearly in a like proportion. The tonnage accordingly of all the European fhipping employed in the Eaft India trade, at any one time during the laft century, was not, perhaps, much greater than

that