a share of it is apt to go to them of its own
accord.
But though the judgment of sober reason
and experience concerning such projects has
always been extremely unfavourable, that of
human avidity has commonly been quite otherwise.
The same passion which has suggested
to so many people the absurd idea of the philosopher's
stone, has suggested to others the
equally absurd one of immense rich mines of
gold and silver. They did not consider that the
value of those metals has, in all ages and nations,
arisen chiefly from their scarcity, and that
their scarcity has arisen from the very small
quantities of them which nature has anywhere
deposited in one place, from the hard and intractable
substances with which she has almost
everywhere surrounded those small quantities,
and consequently from the labour and expense
which are everywhere necessary in order to penetrate,
and get at them. They flattered themselves
that veins of those metals might in
many places be found, as large and as abundant
as those which are commonly found of
lead, or copper, or tin, or iron. The dream
of Sir Walter Raleigh, concerning the golden
city and country of El Dorado, may satisfy
us, that even wise men are not always exempt
from such strange delusions. More than a
hundred years after the death of that great
man, the Jesuit Gumila was still convinced of
the reality of that wonderful country, and expressed,
with great warmth, and, I dare say,
with great sincerity, how happy he should be
to carry the light of the gospel to a people
who could so well reward the pious labours of
their missionary.
In the countries first discovered by the
Spaniards, no gold or silver mines are at
present known which are supposed to be
worth the working. The quantities of those
metals which the first adventurers are said to
have found there, had probably been very
much magnified, as well as the fertility of the
mines which were wrought immediately after
the first discovery. What those adventurers
were reported to have found, however, was
sufficient to inflame the avidity of all their
countrymen. Every Spaniard who sailed to
America expected to find an El Dorado.
Fortune, too, did upon this what she has done
upon very few other occasions. She realized
in some measure the extravagant hopes of her
votaries; and in the discovery and conquest
of Mexico and Peru (of which the one happened
about thirty, and the other about forty,
years after the first expedition of Columbus),
she presented them with something not very
unlike that profusion of the precious metals
which they sought for.
A project of commerce to the East Indies,
therefore, gave occasion to the first discovery
of the West. A project of conquest gave occasion
to all the establishments of the Spaniards
in those newly discovered countries.
The motive which excited them to this conquest
was a project of gold and silver mines;
and a course of accidents which no human
wisdom could foresee, rendered this project
much more successful than the undertakers
had any reasonable grounds for expecting.
The first adventurers of all the other nations
of Europe who attempted to make settlements
in America, were animated by the
like chimerical views; but they were not
equally successful. It was more than a hundred
years after the first settlement of the Brazils,
before any silver, gold, or diamond mines,
were discovered there. In the English, French,
Dutch, and Danish colonies, none have ever
yet been discovered, at least none that are at
present supposed to be worth the working.
The first English settlers in North America,
however, offered a fifth of all the gold and silver
which should be found there to the king,
as a motive for granting them their patents.
In the patents of Sir Walter Raleigh, to the
London and Plymouth companies, to the council
of Plymouth, &c. this fifth was accordingly
reserved to the crown. To the expectation
of finding gold and silver mines, those
first settlers, too, joined that of discovering a
north-west passage to the East Indies. They
have hitherto been disappointed in both.
PART II.
Causes of the Prosperity of New Colonies.
The colony of a civilized nation which takes
possession either of a waste country, or of one
so thinly inhabited that the natives easily give
place to the new settlers, advances more rapidly
to wealth and greatness than any other
human society.
The colonies carry out with them a knowledge
of agriculture and of other useful arts,
superior to what can grow up of its own accord,
in the course of many centuries, among
savage and barbarous nations. They carry
out with them, too, the habit of subordination,
some notion of the regular government which
takes place in their own country, of the system
of laws which support it, and of a regular
administration of justice; and they naturally
establish something of the same kind in
the new settlement. But among savage and
barbarous nations, the natural progress of law
and government is still slower than the natural
progress of arts, after law and government
have been so far established as is necessary
for their protection. Every colonist gets more
land than he can possibly cultivate. He has
no rent, and scarce any taxes, to pay. No landlord
shares with him in its produce, and, the
share of the sovereign is commonly but a trifle.
He has every motive to render as great as possible
a produce which is thus to be almost entirely
his own. But his land is commonly so