Doug Henwood wrote: > Yes, why was it that all that plunder didn't do much for Spanish and > Portuguese industry, while England exploded? Poor Portugal, reduced > to an exporter of processed agricultural goods in Ricardo's famous > example. > [I posted this here a while back.] There's an interesting argument that the accumulation of gold and natural riches was a hindrance vis a vis national economic development,for countries "blessed" with gold and silver mines would: "certainly drop their Cultivation and Manufactures; since Men will not easily be induced to labor and toil, for what they can get with much less Trouble, by exchanging some of the Excess of their Gold and Silver for what they want. Amd if they should be supposed, as is natural enoughin this case, to drop their Cultivation, and especially of Manufactures,which are much the slowest and most laborious Way of supplyingthemselves with what they couls so easily and readily procure byexchanging GOld and Silver, which they too much abound in, they would certainly, in a great measure, by so doing lose the Arts ofCultivation, and especially of Manufatures; as it's thought Spain hath done, merely by the Accession of the Wealth which teh West Indies have produced them;whence they are become a poor Nation, and the Conduit-Pipes to disperseteh Gold and Silver over the world, which other Nations, by making Goodscheaper than they do, are fetching for them, to such a Degree, as thatthe Mines ae scarcely sufficient to answer their occasions; and though they are sensible of this, yet they find by Experience they can'tprevent it." Jacob Vanderlint *Money Answers All Things",52-4, 1737. All this is not to deny the importance of the precious metals in domestic class formation. Sam Pawlett
