Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 3.djvu/270

 Q51t COMMERCE WITH jected their trade to expences which no legitimate profit could cover, and which they were only at first enabled to carry on from the inadequate prices they paid the natives for what they bought, with the enormous profits they exacted from their coun- trymen ; and, lastly, by the ingenious intricacy and confusion of the accounts with which they have contrived to perplex their respective publics. Having rendered this account of the nature and character of the commercial relations which sub- sisted between the European rations and the peo- ple of India, I shall take a view of the nature of their commercial connection with their own coun- trymen. Europe, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, w^as not the great commercial and manu- facturing community which it now is, — capable of supplying Asia with cheap commodities, suited to the taste of the latter. No raw produce of Asia — no productions of that quarter of the globe, become now necessaries of life — were in demand with the European consumer ; nor, were there an effective demand for them, could the rude state of naviga- tion, shackled by monopoly restrictions, afford to import them. The exports were trifling ; and the imports consisted solely in articles of luxury, chief- ly spiceries, with a few manufactured silk and cot- ton stuffs. This was a commerce, which, from its very nature, could never be very extensive, or be- come a national object. There existed no limit