chap, iv.] WEST INDIES. t 93 
cultivated territory, not equal to one tenth part 
of the county of Essex, adding yearly one million 
and a half to the national income, is a circumstance, 
that demonstrates beyond all abstract reasoning, 
the vast importance to Great Britain, of having 
sugar islands of her own. At the same time, it is 
both amusing and instructive to consider, how little 
the present returns from these islands, are answer- 
able to the hopes and expectations of their first 
European possessors; or rather it affords an ani¬ 
mated illustration of the wisdom of Providence* 
which frequently renders the follies and weak¬ 
nesses of man productive of good. The first 
English adventurers were influenced wholly by the 
hopes of opening a golden fountain, similar to that 
which was flowing from Peru and Mexico, into 
Spain. The nation was told of countries where the 
mountains were composed of diamonds, and the ci¬ 
ties built wholly of ingots of gold. Such were the 
dreams of Cabot, Frobisher, and Gilbert, and it is 
a lamentable display of the power of avarice on the 
human mind, to behold the sagacious and learned 
Raleigh bewildered in the same folly! Experience 
has at length corrected this frenzy, and Europe is 
now wise enough to acknowledge, that gold and 
silver have only an artificial and relative values 
that industry alone is real wealth, and that agricul¬ 
ture and commerce are the great sources of nation¬ 
al prosperity. 
The produce of these islands however, though 
of such value to the mother-country, is raised at an 
Vol. II. b b 
