COMMERCE. 



easy to found on the remittances and orders from America, 

 with a view to avoid the losses resulting from the market being 

 imprudently overstocked, cannot be formed at the very con- 

 siderable distance of some of the ports from the others. And, 

 lastly, the moderate prices at which foreign commodities were 

 to be procured, in consequence of their being colle6ted in a 

 single place, will be greatly enhanced by the new system : by 

 dispersing them in various dire6tions, it will not allow them 

 to maintain the just value to which a competition had re- 

 duced them. 



If it were the obje6l of this dissertation to justify the above 

 system, it would not be difficult to dissipate these vain terrors, 

 the offspring of a blind regard to private profit, by establish- 

 ing the advantages the nation derives from the unlimited free- 

 dom of commerce. But as the refle6lions which arise out of 

 this subje6t, are necessarily confined to the efFe6]:s produced on 

 the viceroyalty of Lima, it may be asserted without hesitation, 

 on the testimony of the most exa6l comparitive calculations, 

 between the present condition and that of former times that 

 the mischiefs which have been so much lamented, and so often 

 repeated, do not originate in this source. 



Spain, in the illusion of her prosperity, and with the chi- 

 merical design to appropriate to herself the riches and produc- 

 tions of the new world she had just acquired, not only pro- 

 hibited all trade with foreign countries, but likewise threw ob- 

 stacles in the way of the traffic the natives might establish 

 among themselves. Although, by the edi6l of Charles I. 

 dated in 1529, the commerce of the Indies was to be divided 

 between the different ports of the ocean and Mediterranean, 

 to the end that its advantages should be circulated through all 



p 2 the 



