ations, and is so still, was considered as
scarcely worth retaining.

It is almost unnecessary to add, that from that moment Portugal has
been on the decline. If ever the cup of prosperity ran over, in large
streams, it was then; and when the possession of the trade to India was
scarcely thought worth preserving, it is clear that no great efforts
could be made to encourage internal industry.

Spain, extensive and powerful before it discovered the Indies, did not
so immediately feel the effects of the wealth imported, as the
Portuguese had done; but its prosperity was of less duration, though
the decline was not quite so rapid.

The Dutch must have known the effects of wealth on a nation, else

---
{61} It was debated in council, at Lisbon, whether it would be worth
while to keep India, the wealth from the Brazils was so much more
easily obtained. A scruple of conscience, least =sic= the missionaries
should be destroyed, turned the scale in favour of retaining the trade
of India!!
-=-

[end of page #63]

they would scarcely have tried to throw off the yoke of Spain, at the
very moment when it appeared in its greatest splendour and power.
{62}

Insolence and pride, we have too often had occasion to remark,
accompany wealth; and Philip was no more proof against its effects,
than those potentates who had gone before him.--There was a great
resemblance between the project of invading England, with the
invincible armada, as it was called, and the attack on Greece by the
King of Persia. That monarch must have thought very meanly of
England, to suppose that the island could be conquered by 30,000
men, even if they could have made good their landing. Indeed, to try
such an experiment on a nation that had supported its claim to valour
so well at Agincourt and Cressy, and which was not, in any respect,
degenerated, manifests his being blinded by the effects of wealth and
greatness.

The consequence was, a gradual decline of the affairs of his kingdom;
so that, in little less than a century, England placed a king on the
throne of Spain.

Though the effect produced on Spain was not so rapid as on Portugal,
it was, in some respects, more irretrievable. The vast numbers of
persons who quitted that country, in quest of gold, injured its
population, already reduced by the expulsion of the Moors, who were
the most industrious of its inhabitants.

The wealth that came to Spain, came in a very unequal distribution,
which i