306 



humboldt's cuba. 



activity of the European has inverted the order of 

 nature. It will diminish as the inhabitants become 

 better aware of their true interests, and disheartened 

 at the low prices of colonial products, and they will 

 then vary the staples of their production, and give 

 an impulse to all the branches of rural economy. 1 



The principles of the limited and mean policy 

 which guides the rulers of small islands (workshops, 

 in fact, dependent upon Europe, and inhabited by 

 men who abandon the country as soon as they 

 become sufficiently wealthy), can never harmonize 

 with a country nearly as large in extent as England, 

 filled with populous cities, and whose inhabitants, 

 descending from father to son for centuries, far from 

 deeming themselves strangers upon American soil, 

 hold for it the same affection that every one 

 entertains for his native land. 



lr The study and development of the true principles of Political 

 Economy, during the last quarter of a century, have demonstrated 

 the reverse of this theory of material interests. It is now generally 

 admitted that the labor and capital of a country are most wisely 

 employed in the production of those staples for which its climate 

 and soil are best adapted. In this manner, through the interchanges 

 of a free trade, the wants of the community are supplied with the 

 least expenditure of labor, and a larger portion of its produced 

 wealth is left in the form of capital, to be re-applied to production. It 

 is this combination of agriculture and commerce that has been the 

 source of the great material prosperity of Cuba. 



