THE WEALTH OF NATIONS.

199

time it seems rather to have recovered a little. Spain andPortugal , indeed, are supposed to have gone backwards.Portugal, however, is but a very small part of Europe , andthe declension of Spain is not, perhaps, so great as is com-monly imagined. In the beginning of the sixteenth century,Spain was a very poor country , even in comparison withFrance , which has been so much improved since that time.It was the well-known remark of the emperor Charles V. whohad travelled so frequently through both countries, that everything abounded in France , but that every thing was wantingin Spain . The increasing produce of the agriculture and ma-nufactures of Europe must necessarily have required a gra-dual increase in the quantity of silver coin to circulate it;and the increasing number of wealthy individuals must haverequired the like increase in the quantity of their plate andother ornaments of silver.

Secondly, America is itself a new market for the produceof its own silver mines ; and as its advances in agriculture,industry, and population are much more rapid than those ofthe most thriving countries in Europe , its demand must in-crease much more rapidly. The English colonies are alto-gether a new market, which partly for coin, and partly torplate, requires a continually augmenting supply of silverthrough a great continent where there never was any demandbefore. The greater part too of the Spanish and Portuguese colonies are altogethernew markets. New Granada, the Yuca-tan, Paraguay , and the Frazils, were, before discovered by theEuropeans , inhabited by savage nations, who had neither artsnor agriculture. A considerable degree of both has now beenintroduced into all of them. Even Mexico and Peru , thoughthey cannot be considered as altogether new markets, are cer-tainly much more extensive ones than they ever were before.After all the wonderful tales which have been published con-cerning the splendid state of those countries in ancient times,whoever reads with any degree of sober judgment the historyof their first discovery and conquest, will evidently discernthat, in arts, agriculture, and commerce, their inhabitantswere much more ignorant than the Tartars of the Ukraine areat present. Even the Peruvians, the more civilized nation ofthe two, though they made use of gold and silver as ornaments,had no coined money of any kind. Their whole commercewas carried on by barter, and there was accordingly scarceany division of labour among them. Those who cultivated