208 PAST AND PflESENT STATE OF CUBA. 



the wealth it produces increase rapidly, complaints are heard 

 of the prejudicial influence exercised by them* on ancienf 

 manners. We cannot here stop to compare the first state of 

 the island of Cuba, when covered with pasturage, before the 

 taking of the capital by the English, and its present condi- 

 tion, since it has become the metropolis of the West Indies ; 

 nor to throw into the balance the candour and simplicity of 

 manners of an infant society, against the manners that belong 

 to the development of an advanced civilization. The spirit 

 of commerce, leading to the love of wealth, no doubt brings 

 nations to depreciate what money cannot obtain. But the 

 state of human things is happily such, that what is most 

 desirable, most noble, most free in man, is owing only to the 

 inspirations of the soul, to the extent and amelioration of its 

 intellectual faculties. Were the thirst of riches to take abso- 

 lute possession of every class of society, it would infallibly 

 produce the evil complained of by those who see with regret 

 what they call the preponderance of the industrious system ; 

 but the increase of commerce, by multiplying the connec- 

 tions between nations, by opening an immense sphere to the 

 activity of the mind, by pouring capital into agriculture, and 

 creating new wants by the refinement of luxury, furnishes a 

 remedy against the supposed dangers. 



FINANCE. The increase of the agricultural prosperity of 

 the island of Cuba, and the influence of the accumulation of 

 wealth on the value of importations, have raised the public 

 revenue in these latter years, to four millions and a half, 

 perhaps five millions of piastres. The custom-house of the 

 Havannah, which before 1794, yielded less than 600,000 

 piastres, and from 1797 to 1800, 1,900,000 piastres, pours 

 into the treasury, since the declaration of free trade, a 

 revenue (importe liquido) of more than 3,100,000 piastres.* 



The island of Cuba as yet contains only one forty-second 

 part of the population of France ; and one half of its inha- 

 bitants, being in the most abject indigence, consume but 

 little. Its revenue is nearly equal to that of the Republic 



* The custom house of Port-au-Prince, at Hayti, produced in 1825, 

 the sum of 1,655,764 piastres; that of Buenos Ayres, from 1819 to 

 1821, average year, 1,655,000 piastres. See Centinela de La Plata (Sep- 

 tember, 1822), No. 8; Argos de Buenos Ay ret, No. 85. 



