menfe. They range over the vast plains which extend from Buenos-Ayres, towards the Andes, in herds of thirty or forty thousand; and the unlucky traveller who once falls in among them, may proceed feveral days before he can difentangle himself from among the crowd that covers the face of the earth, and feems to have no end. They are hardly lefs numerous in New Spain, and in feveral other provinces: these are killed merely for the fake of their hides; and the flaughter at certain seasons is fo great, that the ftench of the carcafes, which are left in the field, would infect the air, if large packs of wild dogs, and vaft flocks of gallinazos, or American vultures, the most voracious of all the feathered kind, did not inftantly devour them. The number of those hides exported in every fleet to Europe is prodigious, and is a lucrative branch of commerce. p)

Almost all these may be confidered as ftaple commodities peculiar to America, and different, if we except that laft mentioned, from the productions of the mother-country.

Advantages which Spain derives from her colonies.

When the importation into Spain of those various articles from her colonies, firft became active and confiderable, her interior induftry and

p) Acofta, lib. iii. c. 33. Ovallo Hift. of Chili. Church. Col❤ le&. iii. 47. feq. lbid. v. p. 680. 692. Lettres Edif. xiii. 235. Fouillé, i. 249.

manufactures were in a ftate fo profperous, that with the product of thefe fhe was able both to purchase the commodities of the New World, and to answer its growing demands. Under the reigns of Ferdinand and Isabella and Charles V. Spain was one of the most induftrious countries in Europe. Her manufactures in wool, and flax, and filk, were fo extenfive, as not only to furnish what was fufficient for her own confumption, but to afford a furplus for exportation. When a market for them, formerly unknown, and to which fhe alone had accefs, opened in America, she had recourse to her domeftick store, and found there an abundant fupply. q) This new employment muft naturally have added vivacity to the spirit of induftry. Nourished and invigorated by it, the manufactures the population, and wealth of Spain might have gone on increafing in the fame proportion with the growth of her colonies. Nor was the ftate of the Spanish marine at this period lefs flourishing than that of its manufactures. In the beginning of the fixteenth century, Spain is faid to have possessed above a thousand merchant fhips, r) a number probably far fuperior to that of any nation in Europe. By the aid which foreign trade and domeftick industry give reciprocally to each other in their progress,

q) See NOTE LXIII.

1) Campomanes, ii. 140.

the augmentation of both must have been rapid and extenfive, and Spain might have received the fame acceffion of opulence and vigour from her acquifitions in the New World, that other powers have derived from their colonies there.

Why fhe does not now derive the fame.

But various caufes prevented this. The fame thing happens to nations as to individuals. Wealth, which flows in gradually, and with moderate increase, feeds and nourishes that activity which is friendly to commerce, and calls it forth into vigorous and well-conducted exertions; but when opulence pours in fuddenly, and with too full a ftream, it overturns all fober plans of industry and brings along with it a tafte for what is wild and extravagant, and daring in bufinefs or in action. Such was the great and fudden augmentation of power and revenue, that the poffeffion of America brought into Spain, and fome fymptoms of its pernicious influence upon the political operations of that monarchy foon began to appear. For a confiderable time, however, the fupply of treasure from the New World was feanty and precarious, and the genius of Charles V. conducted publick measures with fuch prudence, that the effects of this influence were little perceived. But when Philip II. afcended the Spanifh throne, with talents far inferior to thofe of his father, and remittances from the colonies became a re

gülar and vaft branch of revenue, the fatal ope ration of this rapid change in the state of the kingdom, both on the monarch and his people, was at once confpicuous. Philip, poffeffing that fpirit of unceafing affiduity, which often characterizes the ambition of men of moderate talents, entertained fuch an high opinion of his own refources, that he thought nothing too arduous for him to undertake. Shut up himself in the folitude of the Efcurial, he troubled and annoyed all the nations around him. He waged open war with the Dutch and English; he encouraged and aided a rebellious faction in France; he conquered Portugal, and maintained armies and garrisons in Italy, Africa, and both the Indies. By fuch a multiplicity of great and complicated operations, pursued with ardour during the courfe of a long reign, Spain was drained both of men and money. Under the weak administration of his fucceffor, Philip III. the vigour of the nation continued to decreafe, and funk into the loweft decline, when the incon fiderate bigotry of that monarch expelled at once near a million of his moft industrious fubjects, (A. D. 1611.) at the very time when the exhaufted state of the kingdom required fome extraordinary exertion of political wisdom to augment its numbers and to revive its ftrength. Early in the feventeenth century, Spain felt fuch a diminution in the number of her people, that from inability to recruit her armies, fhe was

obliged to contract her operations. Her flourishing manufactures were fallen into decay. Her fleets, which had been the terror of all Europe, were ruined. Her extenfive foreign commerce was loft. The trade between different parts of her own dominions was interrupted, and the ships which attempted to carry it on, were taken and plundered by enemies whom she once despised. Even agriculture, the primary objec of industry in every profperous ftate, was neglected, and one of the most fertile countries in Europe hardly raifed what was fufficient for the fupport of its own inhabitants.

Rapid decline of its trade,

In proportion as the population and manufactures of the parent ftate declined, the demands of her colonies continued to increase. The Spaniards, like their monarchs, intoxicated with the wealth which poured in annually upon them, deferted the paths of induftry, to which they had been accuftomed, and repaired with eagernefs to those regions from which this opulence iffued. By this rage of emigration, another drain was opened, and the ftrength of the colonies augmented by exhausting that of the mother-country.

All thofe emigrants, as well as the adventurers who had ad firft fettled in America, depended abfolutely upon Spain for almoft every article of neceffary confumption. Engaged in more alluring and lucrative pursuits, or pre