ON THE PRICE OF FOREIGN PRODUCE. 



decade. The entry in the second is a solitary one, and does 

 not go for much. It may be observed however, that in the 

 third, fourth, fifth and sixth, a substantial rise of nearly the 

 same amount in each successive decade is effected. In the 

 fourth occurred the massacre of Amboyna, which was remem- 

 bered as late as Cromwell's treaty of 1654, in which provision 

 was taken that the perpetrators of that outrage, resented after 

 the lapse of forty years, should be punished, if any of them 

 were still alive. By the middle of the seventeenth century 

 the Dutch had gained their ends, and secured the monopoly 

 which they had laboured so long to effect. 



During this period when success was assured, the price of 

 cloves varies less than that of any other spice. In 1620 Mun 

 alleges that its local price was gd. a pound, the Aleppo price 

 4^. yd. The freight from Aleppo could hardly in that day be 

 less than is. a pound, and the average, Js. 5</., may fairly 

 represent the difference between the wholesale and retail value. 

 In 1623 Malines represents that the sales of the East India 

 Company gave a price of $s. ; Mun, three years before, having 

 put it at 6s. Now the Dutch had the opportunity of entirely 

 destroying the Aleppo trade, by the covenants which they 

 made with the native princes, and as long as they could hold 

 their authority, of raising the price of what they trafficked in 

 to the maximum which the market could bear, or the consumer 

 would pay. In the end, and long after the time on which I 

 am commenting, this policy was suicidal. By stinting their 

 market, the Dutch stinted their profits, by limiting the produce 

 they excited the cupidity of other nations, quite as eager as 

 themselves for commercial advantage and better supplied with 

 the resources out of which they could make their eagerness 

 effectual. The Dutch East India Company loaded themselves 

 with debt, persuaded (unhappily an over-easy task) the Dutch 

 republic that private gain is a national advantage and ought 

 to be guaranteed by national sacrifices, dragged the Bank of 

 Amsterdam into the quicksand, and made a nation bankrupt 

 at a time when the commerce of the country was seemingly 



