Chap. I. ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. 59 



accordingly, they employed the Indians of the Continent to dive for 

 pearls, and in that way confumed prodigious numbers of them. 



When I join to all thefe confiderations the di^eafes which the Spa- 

 niards introduced among thefe poor people, particularly the fmall- 

 pox, which, fays Charlevoix, deftroyed fuch numbers in the great 

 iflands of this Archepelago, that one fhould have thought they had 

 never been peopled ^•■; — and alfo the ufe of wine, in which the In- 

 dians of South America exceeded as much as the Indians of North 

 America do now in fpiritsf ; — and, when I alfo conllder the infinite 

 numbers of people living in eafe and tranquillity in a climate fo fa- 

 vourable to propagation, and in a country abounding fo much in all 

 the neceffaries of life, and from which- there never had been any 

 great migrations, fuch as we know have been from other parts of 

 the earth; — When, I fay, I confidcr all thefe things, I cannot but be 

 of opinion that Las Cafas has not fo much exceeded the truth as 

 Charlevoix has fallen fhort of it, 



I have infilled the more upon this defolation of fo great a part of 

 the earth, that I do not find there is any great notice taken of it in 

 any of the Hiftories of Spain that I have feen, or in any of the ac- 

 counts given us of the conquefls of the Spaniards in the New World; 

 But, as I write the hiftory of man, I did not think that the def- 

 tru(5tion of fo many millions of the fpecies could be pafTed over in 

 filence, but that it ought to be confidered as one of the greateft 

 events of that hiftory. 



But we need not go fo far as Spain to feek examples of mo- 

 ney producing wars. All our own wars fince the peace of Utrecht 

 have arifen from trade or money. The laft: of them, the Ameri- 

 can war, arofe from a demand that we made upon our colonies in 



H 2 America, 



* Page 349. f p. 417. 



