86 



INTRODUCTION. 



a monopoly of our commerce, as well as to make us 

 dependent upon her alone for every article of Euro- 

 pean manufacture. It was not with satisfaction we 

 saw the inhabitants of Great Britain, carrying their 

 products wheresoever they could find a market, while 

 we were not permitted to carry ours to other nations, 

 or to receive their commodities but in a circuitous 

 manner. It was a policy which produced heartburn- 

 ings with freemen, who had lost nothing of the just 

 sense of their rights by transplantation to America. 

 The result proved how unwise this attempt to change 

 the natural current of commerce. Since America has 

 has been left free to engage in the competition so much 

 dreaded, the trade of Great Britain has become infi- 

 nitely more lucrative than it otherwise would have 

 been, for the simple reason, that we have been able to 

 purchase more from her by bein^ able to sell more to 

 others. No proposition can be more clearly proved, 

 than that the prosperity of one nation is a general 

 benefit to all, and it is unquestionable, that the pros- 

 perity of the colony adds to the prosperity of the 

 parent state, not by the dominion and government 

 of it, but by the market which a people of similar 

 habits and wants must furnish for her products. 

 Nearly the same sentiment is expressed by the en- 

 lightened statesman, Campillio. To illustrate the sub- 

 ject by a familiar comparison, what man in any kind 

 of business, would not rather place himself in the 

 midst of a hundred free and industrious families, than 

 in the neighborhood of a planter the master of as 

 many slaves? Such have been the leading principles 

 of the Spanish colonial policy; they have undergone 

 considerable changes at different periods; but these 



