Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/131

Rh would approach as nearly as possible to the real entries, if the different classes of the inhabitants of Peru did not observe a total difference in the articles of their dress. That of the individuals destined to cultivate the plains, and to perform the other useful labours in the different provinces, consists entirely of the cloths and other manufactures of the country. The rule the best adapted to obtain these useful data, and to preserve that nice balance which ought to be maintained between the introduction and the expenditure, is to proportion the imports to the effective value of the territorial productions. If the former be less than the country requires, its inhabitants are compelled to suffer all the disastrous effects of a scarcity. If they exceed their consumption, the importers are subjected to the losses inseparable from an overwhelming abundance, which, by a natural principle, lowers the estimation and price of every commercial effect.

This constant axiom, which is alike supported by theory and practice, appears to be clearly demonstrated by the present state of the commerce of the viceroyalty of Peru. Its annual produce in gold, silver, and other effects, as has been already shewn, amounts to little more than five millions of piastres. Now, in the course of a year, reckoning from the month of September 1785, sixteen vessels anchored in the port of Callao, with cargoes estimated at twenty-four millions.

This excessive importation, together with those of the subsequent years, pretty nearly to the same amount, and the facility of supplying the provinces situated in the interior by the river of La Plata, have occasioned a general clamour to be raised on the subject of the decline of commerce, its.