of navigation reserved to itself all traffic with its colonies, and desired to make the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean its
chap. I.} 1763. own close seas, allowed but four and thirty vessels, some of them small ones, to engage in voyages between itself and the Continent of America on the Atlantic side, and all along the Pacific; while but four others plied to and fro between Spain and the West India Isles.
Having admirable harbors on every side, and a people on the coasts, especially in Biscay and Catalonia, suited to life at sea, all its fisheries, its coasting trade, its imports and exports, and all its colonies, scarcely employed sixteen thousand sailors.
Such were the fruits of commercial monopoly, as illustrated by its greatest example.
From information obtained for the French Government, in the Archives des Affaires Étrangeres.
The political relations of Spain were analogous.
From a consciousness of weakness it leaned on the alliance with France; and the deep venera
