Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 3.djvu/292

 276 COMMERCE WITH more mischievous, than the beasts of prey that wander along with them ; but by far the greater number have made a respectable progress in social order, tamed the useful animals, applied them- selves successfully to agriculture, to fisheries, to navigation, and even to mining. The produc- tions of industry have been, besides, increased by the labour and by the example of the crowd of foreigners who settle or sojourn among them. In such a social state, and in such a relation of the population to the land, manufacturing industry, in the sense in which it is applied in modern Europe, meaning the capacity in which a people possessed of a numerous population, a great capital, and high improvement in machinery, is placed to afford its less civilized neighbours manufactured produce in exchange for the rough produce of their soil, is, of course, out of the question. The Indian Islanders, blessed with an abundance of fertile soil, which cannot be exhausted for ages, will be for an inde- finite time in a condition to supply the more civi- lized world with its cheap and various produce, and necessarily in a condition to pay for the ma- nufactured necessaries or luxuries of the latter. The value and extent of the intercourse between them will increase, it is almost superfluous to in- sist, in the proportion in which freedom and good government will enable them to exchange their re- spective productions, at the smallest cost, and in