employs 32,100 tons of shipping, and 3210 seamen;—
the vaunted spice trade 700 tons,’ and 80
seamen; the tonnage is thus 46 times greater, the
hands employed 40 times greater. The value of
the fishery is L. 1070,000, that of the spices, at
three times their natural price, only L. 120,000,
or little more than a ninth part of the value
of the fishery. This amount for the fishery is
obtained by the labour of 3210 men, among the
boldest, most active, and hardy, that human institutions
are capable of breeding. The spices are obtained
through the enslaving of a population of
46,000, or with the labour of 11,500 persons,
taking the labouring population at about a fourth
of that number,* who, with perhaps a million more,
are by means of it robbed of the most ordinary
rights of human nature, and kept in slavery and
barbarism to insure an unworthy and contemptible
object. It will appear from this, and allowing that
spices bring a monopoly price equal to three times
their natural value, that the labour of one Englishman
is equal to that of 96 natives of the Spice Islands,
with the aid of the productive powers of the soil to
boot. The value of the ordinary labour of a civilized
European over an Asiatic, wherever there is
an opportunity of making a fair comparison, is no
* This is the actual population of Amboyna and the Banda
Isles.
more, however, than as H | is to 1. Some of this
he owes to the natural and inherent superiority of
his physical form, but more to education and to
moral habit.
The Indian Archipelago, so remarkable for the
rich variety of its vegetable and animal productions,
is hardly less distinguished for its mineral wealth.
In tin, it is by far the most productive country on
the globe ; and in gold, it is probably not inferior
to America. Ores of silver, lead, and zinc, on the
other hand, have not yet been discovered at all ; and
iron is scarce, no ores of it sufficiently rich being
at all found in some of the islands, and these the
most distinguished for their vegetable wealth
and civilization. Rich ores of copper are known
to exist in several situations, but this metal is
not generally diffused. The truth, however, is,
that, with respect to the metallic wealth of
those countries, very little is known, for the
industry and civilization necessary to elicit it
neither exist now nor have ever existed. -The
singular wealth of the tin and gold mines has in
a measure obtruded these metals upon notice ; but
it is only through the enterprise of strangers, and
in very recent times, that their produce has become
a respectable object of commerce. The commanding
genius of the European race, though fettered
by so many pernicious restraints, has, since its
authority was established in these regions, had in-
VOL. III. F f