IIESTRICTED TRADE. 



113 



house, though bursting with impatience to speak, 

 never got an opportunity of saying a single word. 

 The scene itself was in the highest degree comic ; 

 but the inference to be drawn from it is also 

 worth attending to. In former times, when mo- 

 nopoly and restrictions blighted every commer- 

 cial and agricultural speculation ; and when the 

 wishes of individuals were never taken into ac- 

 count; and all exertion, or attempt at interfer- 

 ence with the establishment of duties was utterly 

 hopeless ; this man, now so animated, had been 

 given up to indolence, and nothing connected 

 with the custom-house had ever been known to 

 rouse him to the slightest degree of action. Ever 

 since the opening of the trade, however, he had 

 taken the liveliest interest in all that related to 

 import duties at Lima, especially on the subject 

 of Cocoa, of which he was an extensive planter. 



In former times, all such things being irrevo- 

 cably fixed, no exertions of any individual could 

 remedy the evils whichj by rendering every effort 

 the inhabitants could make useless and hopeless, 

 repressed all the energies of the country. And 

 the charge, so often laid against the natives by 



VOL. II. H 



