Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/130

104 insomuch that, if all commerce and intercourse should, by an extraordinary casualty, be at an end, the country which abounds in gold and silver alone, would be exposed to the calamities of wretchedness and want. But as, in the natural and established order of causes and effects, they are followed by the commodities essential to the existence of man, their proprietors will constantly reap advantages proportioned to their more or less flourishing condition. They are a kind of river, on which all things useful and necessary are navigated and transported; commerce being nothing more than the well-rope, without which the water enclosed in the depth beneath would not be of any utility. To proportion to the extent of the latter, the amount of the specie which should be drawn from the mines, belongs to the government; and on this head a competent idea cannot be formed, unless the annual importation into Peru be first considered.

SECTION II.

As the balance of trade varies in proportion to the abundance or scarcity, it is impossible to calculate precisely the annual introduction, consumption, and value of the effects; at the same time that the reports of the custom-houses have the defect of not being accompanied by the prices of the merchandizes; that being a mystery reserved for the secret observations of the merchant, on which he is to found his meditated and allowed profits, and which could not be exacted by the supreme authority, without an odious and unnecessary verification that would be destructive of the freedom of the contracts.

The calculation formed on the number of the consumers would