Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/138

112 whatever Europe can furnish of the useful, the tasteful, and the commodious, has been insensibly diffused throughout Peru. The prices are so much diminished, that a family may now be clad with the finest cloths, for a sum which would not before have procured the coarsest manufactures of the country. The population of Lima has augmented to fifty-two thousand souls; whereas, in 1749, forty-five thousand inhabitants were not to be numbered. The working of the mines, and the refining of the ores, have derived encouragement and aid from the low rate of interest paid by the miner, and from the increased number of those who have capitals to advance. In the royal mint of Lima, four hundred thousand marks of silver are annually wrought, instead of two hundred and thirty thousand, which, on a fair average estimate, were coined in the antecedent times referred to. Lastly, the returns to the mother country have been quadrupled, in proportion to the produce of the kingdom, they having been of the annual amount of four millions and a half of piastres in silver, and of about a million in merchandizes, exclusive of what has been registered by Buenos-Ayres and Carthagena, which then constituted a part of the lading of the armada, but does not now enter into the accounts of the exports of the jurisdiction of Lima. These benefits have been acquired gradually. When the first register ships anchored in the port of Callao, the price of insurances at Cadiz was twenty per cent. On the following year it fell to fifteen; and declined gradually, until, in 1790, it was at the very reduced rate of two per cent. This reduction is an evident and infallible proof of the advantages of the present system. To know whether a country be rich or poor, and to ascertain the degree of protection afforded to commerce, one