Note 4 — Trade of the Philippines

In order that Nueva-España 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 infancy4 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 Cerro5 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 plead his hunger; and much more when we baptise business with the name of diet.