text:  If Peru and Mexico had belonged to England she would have converted their treasures into new canals and high-roads new harbours new encouragements to agriculture new excitements to public education new enterprises of commerce or the colonization of new countries in the productive regions of the globe; and thus she would at once have increased her natural opulence and saved herself from suffering under the depreciation of the precious metals or more partially by her active employment of them have almost wholly prevented that depreciation