tries of Europe, and together with it the real revenue and wealth of the inhabitants. The commodities of Europe were almost all new to America, and many of those of America were new to Europe. A new set of exchanges, therefore, began to take place which had never been thought of before, and which should naturally have proved as advantageous to the new, as it certainly did to the old continent. The savage injustice of the Europeans rendered an event, which ought to have been beneficial to all, ruinous and destructive to several of those unfortunate countries.[1]
The discovery of a passage to the East Indies, by the Cape of Good Hope, which happened much about the same time, opened, perhaps, a still more extensive range to foreign commerce than even that of America, notwithstanding the greater distance. There were but two nations in America, in any respect superior to savages, and these were destroyed almost as soon as discovered. The rest were mere savages. But the empires of China, Hindustan, Japan, as well as several others in the East Indies, without having richer mines of gold or silver, were in every other respect much richer, better cultivated, and more advanced in all arts and manufactures than either Mexico or Peru, even though we should credit, what plainly deserves no credit, the exaggerated accounts of the Spanish writers, concerning the ancient state of those empires. But rich
- ↑ The result of a long experience subsequent to Adam Smith's time has shown that the introduction of European wares is an unmitigated curse to savage and barbarous races, more especially of course the modern adulterated goods of the "great industry." Cruelty and injustice have, moreover, proved themselves, not accidents, but the necessary accompaniments of the conquest of new markets. The savage, used to simple and natural conditions of life, resists the importation of European "shoddy." His resistance has to be overcome, if the market is to be retained, at the point of the bayonet.—Ed.
