Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/137

Rh at fifteen thousand tons, for the consumption of Peru and Terra Firma. In 1740 it was reduced to two thousand, the contraband trade having absorbed thirteen thousand tons. The facility with which the opulent merchant was enabled to engross any particular branch of commerce, rendered him the arbiter of the price, which he augmented to a degree that necessity alone was allowed to regulate. For a quintal of iron a hundred piastres were exacted; for the same quantity of steel, a hundred and fifty; and this monstrous disproportion was observed relatively to the other produ6tions and efFe6ts. The returns to the mother country were proportionate to the small share of influence and interest she had in this commerce: in the space of twenty-six years, from 1714 to 1739, thirty-four millions only of piastres were registered. During the whole of that time, not more than four armadas put to sea; although the regulation imported, that the galleons should be dispatched annually, or within the limit of eighteen months, at the latest. This delay became a new stimulus to the revival of the contraband trade; and the forty-third article of the assiento, by which the English were allowed to send annually a ship of five hundred tons to trade with the Spanish colonies, became so prejudicial to Peru, that a remedy was scarcely to be expected.

It was partly found, in 1748, by the permission to navigate, by Cape Horn, in vessels named register ships, by which the relations with the mother country became more direct and frequent, at the same time that the destructive combinations of foreigners, established on the slow and methodical sailing of the galleons, were frustrated by the uncertainty of the departure, as well as of the number of the ships. Since that time, whatever