It cannot be denied that these ameliorations were attended with the happiest effect; but still, they were insufficient. The growing importance of the Colonies required more than the Mother country was able to supply; while the concessions which had been made, only rendered the restraints still imposed more insupportable. To receive all their supplies through the medium of the Peninsula would not have been a hardship, had she taken, in return, those products, in which the colonies abounded, and upon which the whole wealth of some of them depended. But this she would only do to a very limited extent.[1] Payments in specie were the great object of the Spanish merchant, and to this every other commercial advantage was sacrificed.
The exclusion of foreigners from concurrence, in a market thus organized, was essential to the very existence of the system pursued. Their willingness to receive produce in lieu of silver, in exchange for their manufactures, and to be contented with a moderate rate of profit upon those manufactures, provided they could dispose of them in sufficient quantities, would have rendered competition, on the part of Spain, impossible; at the same time that it must have increased the difficulty of keeping the Colonies in subjection, by augmenting their resources too ra-
- ↑ A return of the importations and exportations from the colonies, would prove how very small was the amount of colonial produce exported from each, (with the exception of the Havanna,) and how constant the drain of specie.
