gold-mines are continually increasing, and it is only for want
of hands that they are not wrought to infinitely more advantage; for
those already discovered and now neglected, would be sufficient to
employ 40,000 men. It may also be observed, that the frauds practised
against the royal revenue are increasing daily, and, as the riches
of the Spanish West Indies are measured by the amount of the royal
revenue, this must make them appear poorer than they are in reality.
We have one instance of this in the mines of Potosi, which are said to
produce less silver than they did formerly; yet, on a computation
for fifty years, the annual revenue to the king has amounted, on the
average, to 220,000 _pesos_, of thirteen rials and a quarter yearly,
which shews that the annual produce of these mines, so far as it has
paid the royal duty, amounts nearly to two million pieces of eight,
or dollars, and it may be confidently asserted that the royal treasury
does not receive above half of what is due: wherefore, from this
example, the rest may be judged of.

[Footnote 8: The coin or denomination is not specified: If dollars, at
4s. 6d., this would amount to four millions and a half sterling.--E.]

Sec. 7. _SOME ACCOUNT OF THE FRENCH INTERLOPERS IN CHILI._

As the policy of Spain chiefly consists in endeavouring, by all
possible means, to prevent the riches of these extensive dominions
from passing into other hands, so the knowledge possessed by other
nations of the great wealth of these countries, and of the great
demand for European manufactures among their inhabitants, has excited
almost every nation in Europe to devise every possible contrivance for
coming in for a share in these riches, and this with such effect, that
it is even questionable whether any considerable portion of the riches
of the new world centres among the inhabitants of Old Spain. This may
be judged of from the following considerations: Even the trade carried
on from Spain to the new world is of much greater importance to
foreigners than to the Spaniards themselves. For as Spain has few
commodities of its own, and carries on scarcely any manufactures, the
Spanish merchants at Cadiz have to make up their cargoes by means of
purchases from other countries; or rather the Cadiz merchants are mere
factors for the merchants of England, France, and Holland, whose goods
they send to America, and pay them by the returns made in the Plate
fleets. Spain also is a country ver