t
also that rather, through its having increased so greatly, the danger
of losing the invested money results.

What their provinces can digest and assimilate, Sire, should be
exported to the Indias, and a limit should be set to the hope of
their increase, and endeavor should be made to preserve them in the
extremely flourishing condition which they reached; and if efforts
pass those limits, then, instead of causing the Indias to increase,
it will be a greater blow, whereby they will slip back more quickly
along the coast of decline.

Coming then to the particular matter, the question is one of
suppressing the commerce now carried on with the Philipinas Islands by
way of the South Sea. This may be advantageous to Espana in two ways:
in making the kingdom of Mejico absolutely dependent on Espana's
aid, without leaving it any other recourse: and in increasing the
proportions of their present trade by adding to that kingdom [_i.e._,
Espana] that commerce from those islands by way of the Ocean Sea,
[55] to which it is desired to direct the trade-route.

In the first place, it will be considered that Nueva-Espana passed
many years without any communication with the Philipinas, and that
the same will happen now if that commerce be taken away, although
at the outset there may be some ill-feeling among them; and that
the prevention of a thing so temporary, and in one province only,
ought not to over-balance what is of so different an importance, as
that Espana (the seat of your Majesty's monarchy) should have plenty
of money. For all that Mexico sends to Manila will go to Espana,
and should have an outlet for its merchandise, since from that must
be supplied what Nueva-Espana now receives from the islands.

In order that Nueva-Espana may preserve itself if this trade be
suppressed, the years while it lived without that trade have no
consequence; for it would be a mistake to compare a period when that
kingdom was in so early an infancy [56] that the royal incomes therein
scarcely amounted to thirty or forty thousand ducados, and when in the
whole kingdom the amount of outside capital employed did not surpass
two hundred thousand, with what El Cerro [57] now alone produces,
where one reckons the product by millions and takes no account of
the tens and hundreds. From all this one may infer that whoever sits
down to a meal, however plentiful, when he sees it growing less would
doubtless have sufficient strength to call out and