SECT. III.] RESULTS OP TRADE. 365 



The immediate results of trade on the civilization of a 

 trading people are not estimated so highly as the efforts made 

 to establish it. There is no doubt that a knowledge of 

 foreign countries, and their history and manners, expands 

 the intellectual horizon; but there does not seem to result 

 from it a genuine improvement in the mode of life, for 

 everything is viewed from the stand-point of profit. " Com- 

 merce," observes Falconer, 1 ' ' renders the people more indus- 

 trious than agriculture; but they become very selfish, they 

 over-estimate the value of wealth ; everything is for sale ; they 

 are sober and honest, not from virtue but from interest, and 

 they become timid and unwarlike." 



Whether trade and intercourse contribute to raise a savage 

 people partly depends on the commodities interchanged, and 

 also on the parties which carry on the trade. The intercourse 

 with a foreign country may become most beneficial, if it, for 

 instance, receives important plants and domestic animals in 

 which it is deficient, so that now a regular agriculture is ren- 

 dered possible ; or it may become a curse, if the natives are 

 provided with brandy, fire-arms, and similar articles, which lead 

 to their destruction. Where cereals of a superior quality are 

 wanting, an original impulse to a higher civilization cannot be 

 expected : thus at Molucca, and Borneo, New Guinea, the pos- 

 session of gold and spices, and the foreign trade with these ar- 

 ticles, do not lead to any great progress. 2 The commerce 

 which more civilized nations entertain with the natives is 

 generally injurious to the latter. It is known that the Dutch 

 at a former period, destroyed the spices, and even prevented 

 the cultivation of rice in the Moluccas, (excepting the Amboyna, 

 Banda, and some small islands), in order to import rice, so 

 as to render the natives altogether dependent on them, and to 

 force them to labour at the lowest wages for their benefit. We 

 need not refer to the slave trade this source of the greatest 

 misery to point out the injury which the intercourse of Euro- 

 peans has done to the natives of many parts of the globe. 

 The treachery, the excesses, the utter absence of any moral 



1 Loc. cit,, p. 404. 2 Crawford, i, p. 15. 



