2d8 
PAST AND PRESENT STATE OP CUBA. 
nf rapidly, complaints are heard 
mnilpi" "•’w exercised by them* on ancient 
the first state of 
the island of Cuba, when covered with pasturage, before the 
tinn'^f- t]ie English, and its present condi- 
nor tn fhlw ’ifomethe metropolis of the Vest Indies ; 
“*r candour and simplicity of 
manners of an infant society, against the manners that belong 
to the development of an advanced civilization. The spirit 
fi-Ar r*p depreciate what money cannot obtain. But the 
£irnS«^'*“? IS Imppily such, that what is most 
desirable, most noble, most free m man, is owing only to the 
®**ent and amelioratiOT of its 
ntel ectiial faculties. 'Were the thirst of riches to takeabso- 
nrndLp *'''*, infallibly 
wTnt the? r. of by those who see with regret 
what they caU the preponderance of the industrious system ; 
but the increase ot commerce, by multiplying the connec- 
activit?o'r tl immense sphere to the 
activity ol the mind by iioimng capital into agriculture and 
creating new v^nts by the refinement of luxury, furnishes a 
remedy against the supposed dangers. 
thf • of tJ'c agricultural prosperity of 
influence of the accLulation of 
w ealth on the value of importations, have raised the public 
fo'^ millions and a half, 
perhaps five millions of piastres. The custom-house of the 
IlaYiiuali, which before 1794, yielded less than 600,000 
b tn f ^ 1,900,000 piastres, pours 
into tlie treasury, since the declaration of free trade, a 
levenue (niiporte hquido) of more than 3,100,000 piastres.* 
mrt of contains only one forty-second 
hhl? I ^ populatmn of Erance; and one half of 'its inha- 
bita^s, being in the most abject indigence, consume but 
little. Its revenue is nearly equal to that of the Eepublic 
the* ‘-““-fnnee. at Hayti, produced in 1826, 
the sum of l,6oo,/M piastres; that of Buenos Ayres, from 1819 to 
tember 1822 /Nn piastres. See Centinela de La Plata (Sep- 
temoer, 1822), No. 8; Argos de Buenos Ayres, No. 85. 
