Page:Memoir upon the negotiations between Spain and the United States of America which led to the treaty of 1819.djvu/79

69 at a very considerable profit: so that the merchants or speculators of the United States, are compelled to repurchase from England, at 20 millions of dollars at least, the very same thing which they sold for five, if we take into this calculation the necessary expense of freight. England has continued thus constantly to draw from the United States the money that comes into them, and to reduce the commerce of that country to a mere deceitful chimera, from which none but their capitalists and manufacturers really draw any solid profit; and it is clear, too, that while it drains these States of money, it impedes, paralizes or destroys their industry, by the flattering illusion which this round of continual speculation and of constant anxiety keeps up. The Anglo-Americans are bewitched by a sort of fanaticism, which does not permit them to see the absolute dependence in which England holds them. They know very well, that their industry cannot enter into competition with that of England, because their country is scarcely peopled even on the sea coasts, and borders of the great rivers, and because wages are excessively dear in it: and they know, that they want both population and machinery to facilitate labour, and economize hands and expense—essential circumstances, in which England has a decided advantage, not only over the United States, but over every other people, even the most civilized and