This would have been severe work for the purse of a Portuguese
peasant a hundred years ago. The plain fact of domestic manufactures
being this, that no folly can be more foolish than to attempt to form
them where the means and the country do not give them a natural
superiority. For example, coals and iron are essential to the product
of all works in metal. France has neither. How can she, therefore,
contest the superiority of our hardware? She contests it simply by
doing without it, and by putting up with the most intolerable cutlery
that the world has ever seen. If, where manufactures are already
established, however ineffectual, it may become a question with the
government whether some privations must not be submitted to by the
people in general, rather than precipitate those unlucky manufactures
into ruin; there can be no question whatever on the subject where
manufactures have not been hitherto established. Let the people go to
the best market, let no attempt be made to force nature, and let no
money be wasted on the worst article got by the worst means. One
thing, however, is quite clear with respect to Portugal, that, by the
English alliance, she has gained what is worth all the manufactures
of Europe--independence. When, in 1640, she threw off the Spanish
usurpation, and placed the Braganza family on the national throne,
she threw herself on the protection of England; and that protection
never has failed her to this hour. In the Spanish invasion of
Portugal in 1762, England sent her ten thousand men, and the first
officer of his day, Count La Lippe, who, notwithstanding his German
name, was an Englishman born, and had commenced his service in the
Guards. The Spaniards were beaten in all directions, and Portugal was
included in the treaty of Fontainbleau in 1763. The deliverance of
Portugal in the Peninsular war is too recent to be forgotten, and too
memorable to be spoken of here as it deserves. And to understand the
full value of this assistance, we are to recollect, that Portugal is
one of the smallest kingdoms of Europe, and at the same time the most
exposed; that its whole land frontier is open to Spain, and its whole
sea frontier is open to France; that its chief produce is wine and
oranges, and that England is incomparably its best customer for both.

Pombal, in his memoir, imputes a portion of the poverty of Portugal
to her possession of the gold mines of Brazil. This is one of the
paradoxes of the last ce