Page:Memoir upon the negotiations between Spain and the United States of America which led to the treaty of 1819.djvu/42

32 in these provinces, that they might enrich themselves with their commerce, and perhaps with their spoils; and lastly, they have had recourse to an unheard of system of piracy against the vessels and property of the Spanish and Portuguese nations, the depredations upon which have already, as is notorious, brought into the United States many millions of dollars.

I have thus briefly, but truly, explained the causes of the rapid and astonishing increase of the population, and of the publick and individual wealth, of these States. But these causes have disappeared; and on the one hand, the extreme and devouring luxury which prevails in all classes of the Anglo- American people, on the other hand, the blindness with which they prosecute mercantile speculations and rash enterprises, have within a few years destroyed large fortunes, and considerably reduced the mass of publick wealth. Population, which in general increases only in proportion with it, may be regarded from the present moment as stationary, or at most, but equal in its future progress to that of other nations, in which it is not opposed or paralized by capital vices in the political and economical systems, or by extraordinary and calamitous events. It is true, that in the state of Illinois, in the territory of MisuriMissouri [sic] or MispsouriMissouri [sic], and others adjoining, there is as I have said a great stimulus to population; but as it increases at those points only at the