collect that the only capital of which the value increases with time, consists in the produce of agriculture, and that nominal wealth becomes illusory, whenever a nation does not possess those raw materials, which serve for the subsistence of man, or as employment for his industry.

BOOK V.

STATE OF THE MANUFACTURES AND COMMERCE

OF NEW SPAIN.

CHAPTER XII.

Manufacturing Industry - Cotton Cloth-Woollen - Cegars ·Soda and Soap-Powder - Coin-Exchange of Productions - Internal Commerce- Roads-Foreign Commerce by Vera Cruz and Acapulco-Obstacles to that Commerce- Yellow Fever.

If we consider the small progress of manufactures in Spain, notwithstanding the numerous encouragements which they have received, since the ministry of the Marquis de la Ensenada, we shall not be surprised that whatever relates to manufactures and manufacturing industry is still less advanced in Mexico. The restless and suspicious policy of the nations of Europe, the legislation and colonial policy of the moderns, which bear very little resemblance to those of the Phenicians and Greeks, have thrown insurmountable obstacles in the way of such settlements

as might secure to these distant possessions, a great degree of prosperity, and an existence independent of the mother country. Such principles as prescribe the rooting up the vine and the olive, are not calculated to favour manufactures. A colony has for ages been only considered as useful to the parent state, in so far as it supplied a great number of raw materials, and consumed a number of the commodities carried there by the ships of the mother country.

It was easy for different commercial nations to adapt their colonial system to islands of small extent, or factories established on the coast of a continent. The inhabitants of Barbadoes, St. Thomas, or Jamaica, are not sufficiently numerous to possess a great number of hands for the manufacture of cotton cloth; and the position of these islands at all times facilitates the exchange of their agricultural produce, for the manufactures of Europe.

It is not so with the continental possessions of Spain in the two Americas. Mexico, beyond the 28° of north latitude, contains a breadth of 350 leagues. The table land of New Grenada communicates with the port of Carthagena by means of a great river, difficult to ascend. Industry is awakened, when towns

of fifty and sixty thousand inhabitants are situated on the ridge of mountains at a great distance from the coast; when a population of several millions can only receive European goods, by transporting them on the backs of mules for the space of five or six months, through forests and deserts. The new colonies were not established among people altogether barbarians.

Before the arrival of the Spa

niards, the Indians were already clothed in the Cordilleras of Mexico, Peru, and Quito. Men who knew the process of weaving cotton, or spinning the wool of the Llamas and Vicunas, were easily taught to manufacture cloth; and this manufacture was established at Cuzco in Peru, and Texcuco in Mexico, a few years after the conquest of those countries, on the introduction of European sheep into America.

The kings of Spain, by taking the title of kings of the Indies, have considered these distant possessions rather as integral parts of their monarchy, as provinces dependent on the crown of Castille, than as colonies in the sense attached to this word since the sixteenth century, by the commercial nations of Europe. They early perceived that these vast countries, of which the coast is less inhabited than the interior, could not be governed like islands scattered in the Atlantic Ocean; and from these circumstances the court of Madrid was

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compelled to have recourse to a less prohibitory system, and to tolerate what it was unable to prevent. Hence a more equitable legislation has been adopted in that country than that by which the greatest part of the other colonies of the New Continent is governed. In the latter, for example, it is not permitted to refine raw sugar; and the proprietor of a plantation is obliged to purchase the produce of his own soil from the manufacturer of the mother country. No law prohibits the refining of sugar in the possessions of Spanish America. If the government does not encourage manufactures, and if it even employs indirect means to prevent the establishment of those of silk, paper, and crystal; on the other hand, no decree of the audience, no royal cedula, declares that these manufactures ought not to exist beyond sea. In the colonies, as well as every where else, we must not confound the spirit of the laws with the policy of those by whom they are administered.

Only half a century ago, two citizens, animated with the purest patriotic zeal, the Count de Gijon, and the Marquis de Maenza, conceived the project of bringing over to Quito, a colony of workmen and artizans from Europe. The Spanish ministry affected to applaud their zeal, and did not think proper to refuse them the privilege of establishing