218 account of Persian cotton. © WO ethis 
may be compared with the golden fleece of the Greeks. 
It is this, gentlemen, that has induced me to give you 
this information, and to lay before you the great occasio- 
pal, though important consequences, that result from the 
researches of men who reflect, who discover, and who 
communicate. 
It may be afked what is my conclusion fidm this fact ? 
There itis. The Portuguese nation, formerly born down 
by a balance of trade quite against her, had drained all 
her treasures. France, Germany, Holland, and especially 
England, pofefsed them, if we may be allowed the -ex- 
prefsion, before ever they had sent them from America, 
and from the east coast of Africa. Her gold was found 
every where ; it was even in my time the most common: 
current specie over all Great Britain, and in all her colo- 
nies. From ove end to the other of England all payments 
were generally made in moidures of Portugal; they a- 
bounded even when guineas were rare, and really d:ficult 
to be get; but in proportion as that nation embraced 
more and more the cultivation of sugar, and especially , 
of cotton, the balance of ttade has taken a change. She 
now pays the manufactures\of the north with these new 
raw productions ; and their a2 by little and little dimi- 
nifhed, and finally disappeared entirely from foreign coun- 
“tries. And I maintain, that, if it were allowed to me to 
enter into a like detail, to fhow that this seed is more 
precious and more useful to them than their mines of gold 
and of diamonds, and perhaps will make her directly fhut 
up for ever both the one and the other, and never to set 
a foot on the banks of the Gambia, or at Mosambique ; 
but to pursue afsiduously the-two cbjects of which I have 
been speaking. It would be then that they might with 
truth sing their Togus aurt, their Tagus with golden sands. 
Such ate the inestimable fruits of industry, and of the 
