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soon came into general use. Having enumerated various commodi- 

 ties which suffered a general depreciation, it may be sufficient to add 

 that many invoices of fancy goods, and such as do not constitute a 

 staple trade, were sold at from sixty to seventy per cent, under costs 

 and charges, and others were totally lost. To enter more into detail 

 would be unnecessary : it is hoped that the trade will in time find its 

 regular course, and that the adventurers will derive from it some 

 compensation for their former losses, though no possible change can 

 repair the total ruin which numbers have incurred. Experience will 

 now have fully shewn the fallacy of those golden hopes which some 

 persons conceived from the reputed wealth of South America, and 

 we shall no longer hear of those absurdities which characterised the 

 first commercial speculations to the river Plata. What must have 

 been the delusions of those traders who sent out tools, formed with 

 a hatchet on one side and a hammer on the other, for the convenien- 

 cy of breaking the rocks, and cutting the precious metals from them, 

 as if they imagined that a man had only to go into the mountains, 

 and cut as much gold as would pay for the articles he wanted ! 



Other evils resulted from these ill-judged and excessive specula- 

 tions to South America, which might naturally have been antici- 

 pated. The first was, that the produce was bought up with such 

 avidity that many articles were soon double their ordinary value, and 

 continued to rise as our manufactures lowered. But this was not 

 all : the purchasers suifered equally from their ignorance of the qua- 

 lity of the articles, as from their eagerness in purchasing them. For 

 instance; any kind of sebaceous matter was greedily bought for tal- 

 low ; and numberless hides, spoiled in the drying and eaten by the 

 grub, met with ready sale. Little attention was paid to the state 

 they were in ; and thus it frequently happened that lots and cargoes 

 of those articles, instead of reimbursing the adventurer to whom they 

 were consigned, scarcely paid freight and charges. This was also the 

 case with coffee and other staple articles. Many gentlemen, more 

 knowing than others, sent home lots of curious wood, and even en- 



