26 JOURNAL. 
for it will drive the people back to their habits of wearing nothing 
but their household stuffs, and thereby afford less leisure for agri- 
culture, thence less food, and consequently check the now increasing 
population ; at the same time that, by discouraging the use of foreign 
stuffs, the import duties must fail. Are nations like individuals, who 
never profit by each other’s experience ? and must each state have its 
dark age ? 
I have received many visits in the course of the day to congratulate 
me on my return, the most and the kindest from my naval friends ; 
and I am particularly flattered by Lord Cochrane’s coming with 
Captains Wilkinson and Crosbie, and Mr. H. E. to tea. Before I 
could give it to them, an incident truly characteristic happened: we 
were obliged to wait while a man went to catch a cow with the laca 
on the hill, to procure milk. After what I had seen of the manage- 
ment of the dairy at M. Salinas’, I could not wonder, and had 
nothing to do but sit patiently till the milk arrived, and my guests 
being older inhabitants of the country than I am, were equally re- 
signed ; and the interval was filled with pleasant conversation. 
6th. — The exorbitant duties, not yet formally imposed but an- 
nounced, on various English goods, have induced Capt. Vernon, of 
H. M. ship Doris, to go to Santiago; and, if possible, procure some 
mitigation of the duties, or at least a less vexatious regulation with 
regard to the manifesto. I wish our government would acknowledge 
the independence of the states of South America at once; and send 
proper consuls or agents to guard our trade, and to take from it the 
disgrace of being little else than smuggling on a larger scale. How 
easily might it have been settled, for instance, that the brute metals 
of this country should be legal returns for the manufactured goods 
of Europe, India, and China; instead of, as now, subjecting them to 
all the losses and risks of smuggling: for, as they are the only 
returns the country can make to Europe, they will find their way 
thither ; and the attempt to confine them is as absurd as that ancient 
law of Athens which forbade the selling of the figs of Attica, lest 
