of a very important manufacture, and
was at that time, to Europeans, undoubtedly
the most valuable of all the vegetable
productions of those islands. But though,
in the end of the fifteenth century, the muslins
and other cotton goods of the East Indies
were much esteemed in every part of Europe,
the cotton manufacture itself was not
cultivated in any part of it. Even this production,
therefore, could not at that time appear
in the eyes of Europeans to be of very
great consequence.
Finding nothing, either in the animals
or vegetables of the newly discovered countries
which could justify a very advantageous
representation of them, Columbus turned
his view towards their minerals; and in
the richness of their productions of this third
kingdom, he flattered himself he had found a
full compensation for the insignificancy of those
of the other two. The little bits of gold with
which the inhabitants ornamented their dress,
and which, he was informed, they frequently
found in the rivulets and torrents which fell
from the mountains, were sufficient to satisfy
him that those mountains abounded with the
richest gold mines. St. Domingo, therefore,
was represented as a country abounding with
gold, and upon that account (according to
the prejudices not only of the present times,
but of those times), an inexhaustible source of
real wealth to the crown and kingdom of
Spain. When Columbus, upon his return
from his first voyage, was introduced with a
sort of triumphal honours to the sovereigns of
Castile and Arragon, the principal productions
of the countries which he had discovered were
carried in solemn procession before him. The
only valuable part of them consisted in some
little fillets, bracelets, and other ornaments of
gold, and in some bales of cotton. The rest were
mere objects of vulgar wonder and curiosity;
some reeds of an extraordinary size, some
birds of a very beautiful plumage, and some
stuffed skins of the huge alligator and manati;
all of which were preceded by six or seven
of the wretched natives, whose singular colour
and appearance added greatly to the novelty
of the show.
In consequence of the representations of
Columbus, the council of Castile determined
to take possession of the countries of which
the inhabitants were plainly incapable of defending
themselves. The pious purpose of
converting them to Christianity sanctified the
injustice of the project. But the hope of
finding treasures of gold there was the sole
motive which prompted to undertake it; and
to give this motive the greater weight, it was
proposed by Columbus, that the half of all
the gold and silver that should be found there,
should belong to the crown. This proposal
was approved of by the council.
As long as the whole, or the greater part
of the gold which the first adventurers imported
into Europe was got by so very easy
a method as the plundering of the defenceless
natives, it was not perhaps very difficult to
pay even this heavy tax; but when the natives
were once fairly stript of all that they
had, which, in St. Domingo, and in all the
other countries discovered by Columbus, was
done completely in six or eight years, and
when, in order to find more, it had become
necessary to dig for it in the mines, there was
no longer any possibility of paying this tax.
The rigorous exaction of it, accordingly, first
occasioned, it is said, the total abandoning
of the mines of St. Domingo, which have
never been wrought since. It was soon reduced,
therefore, to a third; then to a fifth;
afterwards to a tenth; and at last to a twentieth
part of the gross produce of the gold
mines. The tax upon silver continued for a
long time to be a fifth of the gross produce.
It was reduced to a tenth only in the course
of the present century. But the first adventurers
do not appear to have been much interested
about silver. Nothing less precious
than gold seemed worthy of their attention.
All the other enterprizes of the Spaniards
in the New World, subsequent to those of
Columbus, seem to have been prompted by
the same motive. It was the sacred thirst of
gold that carried Ovieda, Nicuessa, and Vasco
Nugnes de Balboa, to the Isthmus of Darien;
that carried Cortes to Mexico, Almagro and
Pizarro to Chili and Peru. When those adventurers
arrived upon any unknown coast,
their first inquiry was always if there was any
gold to be found there; and according to the
information which they received concerning
this particular, they determined either to quit
the country or to settle in it.
Of all those expensive and uncertain projects,
however, which bring bankruptcy up
on the greater part of the people who engage
in them, there is none, perhaps, more
perfectly ruinous than the search after new
silver and gold mines. It is, perhaps, the most
disadvantageous lottery in the world, or the
one in which the gain of those who draw the
prizes bears the least proportion to the loss of
those who draw the blanks; for though the
prizes are few, and the blanks many, the common
price of a ticket is the whole fortune of
a very rich man. Projects of mining, instead
of replacing the capital employed in them, together
with the ordinary profits of stock, commonly
absorb both capital and profit. They
are the projects, therefore, to which, of all
others, a prudent lawgiver, who desired to
increase the capital of his nation, would least
choose to give any extraordinary encouragement,
or to turn towards them a greater share
of that capital than what would go to them
of its own accord. Such, in reality, is the
absurd confidence which almost all men have
in their own good fortune, that wherever there
is the least probability of success, too great