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and that of trade, are not the ruin of states, the 

 welfare of which flows from a natural source* 

 Productive and commercial Europe will profit 

 from the new order of things in Spanish Ame- 

 rica, as it would profit by the increase of it's 

 consumption, from events that might put an 

 end to barbarism in Greece, or the northern coast 

 of Africa, and in other countries subjected to 

 the tyranny of the Ottomans. What most 

 menaces the prosperity of the ancient continent 

 is the prolongation of those intestine struggles, 

 which stop production, and diminish at the same 

 time the number and wants of the consumers* 

 This struggle, begun in Spanish America six 

 years after my departure, is drawing gradually 

 to an end. We shall soon see independent 

 nations, ruled by very different forms of govern- 

 ment, but united by the remembrance of a 

 common origin, the uniformity of language, and 

 the wants to which civilization gives rise, in- 

 habit the two shores of the Atlantic. It may be 

 said, that the immense progress of the art of 

 navigation has narrowed the basin of the Seas. 

 The Atlantic. Ocean already appears to us in the 

 form of a narrow channel, which as little re- 

 moves the New World from the commercial 

 states of Europe, as the basin of the Mediterra- 

 nean, in the infancy of navigation, removed the 

 Greeks of Peloponnesus from those of Ionia> 

 Sicily, and the Cyrenaic region. 



