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THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF

the ground were obliged to build their own houses, to maketheir own household furniture, their own clothes, shoes, andinstruments of agriculture. The few artificers among themare said to have been all maintained by the sovereign, thenobles, and the priests, and were probably their servants orslaves. All the ancient arts of Mexico and Peru have neverfurnished one single manufacture to Europe. The Spanish armies, though they scarce ever exceeded five hundred men,and frequently did not amount to half that number, foundalmost every where great difficulty in procuring subsistence.The famines which they are said to have occasioned almostwherever they went, in countries too which at the same timeare represented as very populous and well-cultivated, suffi-ciently demonstrate that the story of this populousness andhigh cultivation is in a great measure fabulous. The Spanish colonies are under a government in many respects less favour-able to agriculture, improvement, and population, than thatof the English colonies. They seem,however, to be advancingin all these much more rapidly than any country in Europe .In a fertile soil and happy climate, the great abundance andcheapness of land, a circumstance common to all new colo-nies, is, it seems, so great an advantage as to compensatemany defects in civil government. Frezier, who visited Peru in 1713, represents Lima as containing between twenty-fiveand twenty-eight thousand inhabitants. Ulloa, who residedin the same country between 1740 and 174(5, represents it ascontaining more than fifty thousand. The difference in theiraccounts of the populousness of several other principal townsin Chili and Peru is nearly the same ; and as there seems tobe no reason to doubt of the good information of either, itmarks an increase which is scarce inferior to that of the Eng-lish colonies. America , therefore, is a new market for theproduce of its own silver mines, of which the demand mustincrease much more rapidly than that of the most thrivingcountry in Europe .

Thirdly, the East Indies is another market for the produceof the silver mines of America , and a market which, fromthe time of the first discovery of those mines, has been con-tinually taking off' a greater and a greater quantity of silver.Since that time, the direct trade between America andthe East Indies, which is carried on by means of the Aca-pulco ships, has been continually augmenting, and the indi-rect intercourse by the way of Europe has been augmenting