vanity which directs that of all the other great
proprietors in their dominions. The insignificant
pageantry of their court becomes every
day more brilliant; and the expense of it not
only prevents accumulation, but frequently
encroaches upon the funds destined for more
necessary expenses. What Dercyllidas said
of the court of Persia, may be applied to that
of several European princes, that he saw there
much splendour, but little strength, and many
servants, but few soldiers.
The importation of gold and silver is not
the principal, much less the sole benefit, which
a nation derives from its foreign trade. Between
whatever places foreign trade is carried
on, they all of them derive two distinct benefits
from it. It carries out that surplus part
of the produce of their land and labour for
which there is no demand among them, and
brings back in return for it something else for
which there is a demand. It gives a value to
their superfluities, by exchanging them for
something else, which may satisfy a part of
their wants and increase their enjoyments. By
means of it, the narrowness of the home market
does not hinder the division of labour in
any particular branch of art or manufacture
from being carried to the highest perfection.
By opening a more extensive market for whatever
part of the produce of their labour may
exceed the home consumption, it encourages
them to improve its productive power, and to
augment its annual produce to the utmost, and
thereby to increase the real revenue and wealth
of the society. These great and important
services foreign trade is continually occupied
in performing to all the different countries
between which it is carried on. They all derive
great benefit from it, though that in which
the merchant resides generally derives the
greatest, as he is generally more employed in
supplying the wants, and carrying out the superfluities
of his own, than of any other particular
country. To import the gold and silver
which may be wanted into the countries which
have no mines, is, no doubt, a part of the business
of foreign commerce. It is, however,
a most insignificant part of it. A country
which carried on foreign trade merely upon
this account, could scarce have occasion to
freight a ship in a century.
It is not by the importation of gold and silver
that the discovery of America has enriched
Europe. By the abundance of the American
mines, those metals have become cheaper.
A service of plate can now be purchased
for about a third part of the corn, or a third
part of the labour, which it would have cost
in the fifteenth century. With the same annual
expense of labour and commodities, Europe
can annually purchase about three times
the quantity of plate which it could have purchased
at that time. But when a commodity
comes to be sold for a third part of what had
been its usual price, not only those who purchased
it before can purchase three times their
former quantity, but it is brought down to the
level of a much greater number of purchasers,
perhaps to more than ten, perhaps to more
than twenty times the former number. So
that there may be in Europe at present, not
only more than three times, but more than
twenty or thirty times the quantity of plate
which would have been in it, even in its present
state of improvement, had the discovery
of the American mines never been made. So
far Europe has, no doubt, gained a real conveniency,
though surely a very trifling one.
The cheapness of gold and silver renders those
metals rather less fit for the purposes of money
than they were before. In order to make
the same purchases, we must load ourselves
with a greater quantity of them, and carry about
a shilling in our pocket, where a groat
would have done before. It is difficult to say
which is most trifling, this inconveniency, or
the opposite conveniency. Neither the one
nor the other could have made any very essential
change in the state of Europe. The
discovery of America, however, certainly made
a most essential one. By opening a new and
inexhaustible market to all the commodities of
Europe, it gave occasion to new divisions of
labour and improvements of art, which in the
narrow circle of the ancient commerce could
never have taken place, for want of a market
to take off the greater part of their produce.
The productive powers of labour were improved,
and its produce increased in all the
different countries of Europe, and together
with it the real revenue and wealth of the inhabitants.
The commodities of Europe were
almost all new to America, and many of those
of America were new to Europe. A new set
of exchanges, therefore, began to take place,
which had never been thought of before, and
which should naturally have proved as advantageous
to the new, as it certainly did to the
old continent. The savage injustice of the
Europeans rendered an event, which ought to
have been beneficial to all, ruinous and destructive
to several of those unfortunate countries.
The discovery of a passage to the East Indies
by the Cape of Good Hope, which happened
much about the same time, opened perhaps
a still more extensive range to foreign
commerce, than even that of America, notwithstanding
the greater distance. There were
but two nations in America, in any respect,
superior to the savages, and these were destroyed
almost as soon as discovered. The
rest were mere savages. But the empires of
China, Indostan, Japan, as well as several
others in the East Indies, without having
richer mines of gold or silver, were, in every
other respect, much richer, better cultivated,
and more advanced in all arts and manufactures,
than either Mexico or Peru, even though
we should credit, what plainly deserves no