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Rh was permitted to trade with them, or foreign vessel to enter their ports;—no American could own a ship. In Spain itself, the trade was confined, for upwards of a century, to the single port of Seville, from which every vessel chartered for America was ordered to sail, and to which it was compelled to return. Death was the penalty denounced against any infringement of these stern laws; and a formidable establishment of Guarda Costas was maintained, for the express purpose of enforcing them.

In order to increase the wants of the Colonies, they were forbidden to manufacture any article that the Mother country could supply; and were even compelled to forego the advantages, which they might have derived from the superior fertility of their own soil, and to draw from Spain necessaries, with which Nature furnished them almost at their own doors. The cultivation of the vine and the olive, for both of which the climate of America is admirably adapted, was prohibited; and even the growth of the more precious articles, of what we term colonial produce, (as cacao, coffee, and indigo,) was only tolerated, under certain limitations, and in such quantities as the Mother country might wish annually to export. Nothing could exceed the distress, to which those parts of the Spanish dominions, which were not enriched by veins of gold or silver, were reduced by these regulations. The whole coast of Venezuela was sunk in poverty, in the midst of