od of acquiring general riches, political power, and even his
own private advantage, is to sell his country'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. 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 to be rent asunder the veil of obscurity, 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 each 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."

Lord Cochrane left Guayaquil on the 3rd of December, and cruised
northwards in search of the _Prueba_ and the _Venganza_, the only two
remaining Spanish frigates, which had made their escape from Callao
and gone in the direction of Mexico. He sailed along the Colombian
and Mexican coasts as far as Acapulco, where he called on the 29th
of January, 1822, without finding the objects of his search. He there
learned, on the 2nd of February, from an in-coming merchantman, that
the frigates had eluded him and were now somewhere to the southwards.
Upon that he at once retraced his course, and, in spite of a storm
which nearly wrecked his two best ships, one of them being the
captured _Esmeralda_, now christened the _Valdivia_, was at Guayaquil
again on the 13th of March. There, as he expected, from information
received on the passage, he found the _Venganza._ B