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BOOK
IV.

All the other enterprises of the Spaniards in the New World, subsequent to those of Columbus, seem to have been prompted by the fame motive. It was the facred thirst of gold that carried Oieda, Nicuessa, and Vasco Nugnes de Balboa, to the ifthmus of Darien, that carried Cortez to Mexico, and Almagro and Pizzarro to Chili and Peru. When those adventurers arrived upon any unknown coaft, their first enquiry was always if there was any gold to be found there; and according to the information which they received concerning this particular, they determined either to quit the country or to fettle in it.

Of all those expensive and uncertain projects, however, which bring bankruptcy upon the greater part of the people who engage in them, there is none perhaps more perfectly ruinous than the fearch after new filver and gold mines. It is perhaps the most disadvantageous lottery in the world, or the one in which the gain of those who draw the prizes bears the leaft proportion to the lofs of those who draw the blanks: for though the prizes are few and the blanks many, the common price of a ticket is the whole fortune of a very rich man. Projects of mining, inftead of replacing the capital employed in them, together with the ordinary profits of stock, commonly absorb both capital and profit. They are the projects, therefore, to which of all others a prudent law-giver, who defired to increase the capital of his nation, would least chuse to give any extraordinary encouragement, or to turn towards towards them a greater share of that capital than CHAP. what would go to them of its own accord. Such in reality is the abfurd confidence which almoft all men have in their own good fortune, that wherever there is the leaft probability of fuccefs, too great a share of it is apt to go to them of its own accord.

VII.

But though the judgment of fober reason and experience concerning fuch projects has always been extremely unfavourable, that of human avidity has commonly been quite otherwise. The fame paffion which has fuggefted to fo many people the abfurd idea of the philosopher's stone, has fuggefted to others the equally abfurd one of immenfe rich mines of gold and filver. They did not confider that the value of those metals has, in all ages and nations, arifen chiefly from their scarcity, and that their scarcity has arifen from the very fmall quantities of them which nature has any where depofited in one place, from the hard and intractable substances with which she has almost every where furrounded those small quantities, and confequently from the labour and expence which are every where neceffary, in order to penetrate to and get at them. They flattered themselves that veins of those metals might in many places be found as large and as abundant as those which are commonly found of lead, or copper, or tin, or iron. The dream of Sir Walter Raleigh concerning the golden city and country of Eldorado, may fatisfy us, that even wife men are not always exempt from fuch strange delufions. More than a hun

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IV.

BOOK a hundred years after the death of that great man, the Jefuit Gumila was still convinced of the reality of that wonderful country, and expreffed with great warmth, and I dare to say, with great fincerity, how happy he should be to carry the light of the gospel to a people who could fo well reward the pious labours of their miffionary.

In the countries first discovered by the Spaniards, no gold or filver mines are at present known which are fuppofed to be worth the working. The quantities of those metals which the first adventurers are faid to have found there, had probably been very much magnified, as well as the fertility of the mines which were wrought immediately after the first discovery. What those adventurers were reported to have found, however, was fufficient to inflame the avidity of all their countrymen. Every Spaniard who failed to America expected to find an Eldorado. Fortune too did upon this what she has done upon very few other occafions. She realized in fome measure the extravagant hopes of her votaries, and in the difcovery and conquest of Mexico and Peru (of which the one happened about thirty, the other about forty years after the first expedition of Columbus), she prefented them with fomething not very unlike that profufion of the precious metals which they fought for.

A project of commerce to the East Indies, therefore, gave occafion to the first discovery of the Weft. A project of conquest gave occafion to all the establishments of the Spaniards in those newly

VII.

newly discovered countries. The motive which CHAP. excited them to this conquest was a project of gold and filver mines; and a course of accidents, which no human wifdom could forefee, rendered this project much more fuccefsful than the undertakers had any reasonable ground for expecting.

The first adventurers of all the other nations of Europe, who attempted to make fettlements in America, were animated by the like chimerical views; but they were not equally fuccessful. It was more than a hundred years after the first fettlement of the Brazils, before any filver, gold, or diamond mines were difcovered there. In the English, French, Dutch, and Danish colonies, none have ever yet been discovered; at least none that are at present supposed to be worth the working. The first English settlers in North America, however, offered a fifth of all the gold and filver which should be found there to the king, as a motive for granting them their patents. In the patents to Sir Walter Raleigh, to the London and Plymouth companies, to the council of Plymouth, &c. this fifth was accordingly referved to the Crown. To the expectation of finding gold and filver mines, those first fettlers too joined that of difcovering a north-weft pafsage to the East Indies. They have hitherto been disappointed in both.

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BOOK
IV.

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PART SECOND.

Causes of the Prosperity of new Colonies.

HE colony of a civilized nation which takes poffeffion, either of a wafte country, or of one so thinly inhabited, that the natives eafily give place to the new fettlers, advances more rapidly to wealth and greatness than any other human society.

The colonifts carry out with them a know. ledge of agriculture and of other useful arts, superior to what can grow up of its own accord in the course of many centuries among favage and barbarous nations. They carry out with them too the habit of fubordination, fome notion of the regular government which takes place in their own country, of the system of laws which supports it, and of a regular administration of justice; and they naturally establish something of the fame kind in a new fettlement. But among favage and barbarous nations, the natural progress of law and government is still flower than the natural progress of arts, after law and government have been so far established, as is necessary for their protection. Every colonift gets more land than he can poffibly cultivate. He has no rent, and scarce any taxes to pay. No landlord shares with him in its produce, and the share of the fovereign is commonly but a trifle. He has every motive to render as great as pof.

fible a produce, which is thus to be almost en,

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