THE WEALTH OF NATIONS.

535

occasions, but they serve to introduce among them the habitof vanity and expense upon all other occasions. They arenot oidy very grievous occasional taxes, but they contributeto establish perpetual taxes of the same kind still moregrievous; the ruinous taxes of private luxury and extrava-gance. In the colonies of all those three nations too, theecclesiastical government is extremely oppressive. Tithestake place in all of them, and are levied with the utmostrigour in those of Spain and Portugal . All of them besidesare oppressed with a numerous race of mendicant friars,whose beggary being not only licensed, but consecrated byreligion, is a most grievous tax upon the poor people, whoare most carefully taught that it is a duty to give, and a verygreat sin to refuse them their charity. Over and above all this,the clergy arc, in all of them, the greatest engrossers of land.

Fourthly, in the disposal of their surplus produce, or ofwhat is over and above their own consumption, the English colonies have been more favoured, and have been allowed amore extensive market, than those of any other European nation. Every European nation has endeavoured more orless to monopolize to itself the commerce of its colonies, and,upon that account, has prohibited the ships of foreign na-tions from trading to them, and has prohibited them fromimporting European goods from any foreign nation. Butthe manner in which this monopoly has been exercised indifferent nations has been very different.

Some nations have given up the whole commerce of theircolonies to an exclusive company, of whom the colonies wereobliged to buy all such European goods as they wanted, andto whom they were obliged to sell the whole of their ownsurplus produce. It was the interest of the company, there-fore, not only to sell the former as dear, and to buy the latteras cheap as possible, but to buy no more of the latter, evenat this low price, than what they could dispose of for a veryhigh price in Europe . It was their interest not only to de-grade iu a p casos th e value of the surplus produce of thecolony, but in many cases to discourage and keep down thenatural increase of its quantity. Of all the expedients thatcan well be contrived to stunt the natural growth of a newcolony, that of an exclusive company is undoubtedly the mosteffectual. 1 his, however, has been the policy of Holland,though their company, i u the course of the present century,*

given up in many respects the exertion of their exclusive