412 COMMERCIAL DESCRIPTION OF own affairs, and •would not consider their emanci- pation as a boon, but an injury. This futile and selfish reasoning hardly deserves serious attention. If this were true, it would convey the most un- measured censure on a system which could so won- derfully debase their character, for the same men fought and bled for a century together for those very rights which they would now be represented as rejecting. But, in truth, the inhabitants of the Moluccas are at this day most anxious for a free trade, as the pains and penalties of the monopoly regulations sufficiently declare. In spite of the confiscation of property, and the penalties of ba- nishment and death, there are annually smuggled from the Banda Islands no less than 60,000 lbs. of nutmegs, and 15,000 lbs. of mace. I shall be held excused for the length at which I have treated of the spice trade, although more than commensurate with its present importance, when the peculiarly severe lot of the natives of the Moluccas, from the earliest intercourse of Eu- ropeans with them down to the present times, is considered. Under the influence of principles the most unjust, fallacious, and unprofitable, they have for two centuries been subjected to, a scourge upon industry, of which, for severity, there is no other example in any age or climate. The delusion which led to this system still continues to influence the policy of the European nations ; and it is re-
