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 to 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 Eldorado, 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 to 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 Eldorado.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, 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 to Sir Walter Raleigh, to the London and Plymouth Companies, to the Council of Plymouth, etc., 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 northwest passage to the East Indies.They have hitherto been disappointed in both.
PART 2
Causes of Prosperity of New Colonies THE colony of a civilised 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 colonists 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 go 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.