untry's produce as high, and foreign goods as low as possible--and
that public competition can alone accomplish this. Let foreign
merchants who bring capital, and those who practise any art or
handicraft, be permitted to settle freely; and thus a competition
will be formed, from which all must reap advantage.

Then will land and fixed property increase in value; the
magazines, instead of being the receptacles of filth and crime, will
be full of the richest foreign and domestic productions, and all will
be energy and activity, because the reward will be in proportion to
the labour. Your river will be filled with ships, and the monopolist
degraded and shamed. You will bless the day in which Omnipotence
permitted the veil of obscurity to be rent asunder, under which the
despotism of Spain, the abominable tyranny of the Inquisition, and
the want of liberty of the press, so long hid the truth from your
sight.

Let your customs' duties be moderate, in order to promote the
greatest possible consumption of foreign and domestic goods; then
smuggling will cease, and the returns to the treasury increase. Let
every man do as he pleases as regards his own property, views, and
interests; because every individual will watch over his own with
more zeal than senates, ministers, or kings. By your enlarged
views set an example to the New World; and thus, as Guayaquil
is from its situation the _Central Republic_, it will become the centre
of the agriculture, commerce, and riches of the Pacific.

Guayaquilenos! The liberality of your sentiments, and the justice
of your acts and opinions, are a bulwark to your independence more
secure than that of armies and squadrons. That you may pursue
the path which will render you as free and happy as the territory is
fertile, and may be rendered productive, is the sincere wish of your
obliged friend and servant,

COCHRANE.

The English reader may consider a lecture of this nature superfluous to
an emancipated people, but the adherence to injurious monoplies, in
spite of independence, was one of the most marked features of the South
American Republics, and one which I never lost an opportunity of
combating. Even the Chilian Republic, which was amongst the first to
assert its freedom, increased its monopolistic practices, instead of
diminishing them. One or two examples will not be here out of place.

English