112 



COMMERCE, 



whatever Europe can furnish of the useful, the tasteful, and 

 the commodious, has been insensibly diffused throughout Peru, 

 The prices are so much diminished, that a family may now 

 be clad with the finest cloths, for a sum which would not be- 

 fore have procured the coarsest manufactures of the country. 

 The population of Lima has augmented to fifty-two thousand 

 souls; whereas, in 1749, forty-five thousand inhabitants were 

 not to be numbered. The working of the mines, and the re- 

 fining of the ores, have derived encouragement and aid from 

 the low rate of interest paid by the miner, and from the in- 

 creased number of those who have capitals to advance. In 

 the royal mint of Lima, four hundred thousand marks of sil- 

 ver are annually wrought, instead of two hundred and thirty 

 thousand, which, on a fair average estimate, were coined in 

 the antecedent times referred to. Lastly, the returns to the 

 mother country have been quadrupled, in proportion to the 

 produce of the kingdom, they having been of the annual 

 amount of four millions and a half of piastres in silver, and of 

 about a million in merchandizes, exclusive of what has been 

 registered by Buenos-Ayres and Carthagena, which then con- 

 stituted a part of the lading of the armada, but does not now en- 

 ter into the accounts of the exports of the jurisdidlion of Lima. 



These benefits have been acquired gradually. When the 

 first register ships anchored in the port of Callao, the price of 

 insurances at Cadiz was twenty per cent. On the following 

 year it fell to fifteen ; and declined gradually, until, in 1790, 

 it was at the very reduced rate of two per cent. This reduc- 

 tion is an evident and infallible proof of the advantages of the 

 present system. To know whether a country be rich or poor, 

 and to ascertain the degree of protection afforded to commerce, 



one 



