Some obscure individuals, some writers unacquainted with the views of government, with their secret negotiations, with the character of their ministers, with the interests of the protectors and the protected, who flatter themselves that they can discern the reason of events, amongst a multitude of important or frivolous causes, which may have equally occasioned them; who do not conceive, that among all these causes, the most natural may possibly be the farthest from the truth; who after having read the news, of journal of the day, with profound attention, decide as peremptorily as if they had been placed all their life-time at the helm of the state, and had assisted at the council of kings; who are never more deceived than in those circumstances, in which they display some share of penetration; writers as absurd in the praise as in the blame which they bestow upon nations, in the favourable or unfavourable opinion they form of ministerial operations; these idle dreamers, in a word, who think they are persons of importance, because their attention is always engaged on matters of consequence, being convinced that courts are always governed in their decisions by the most comprehensive views of profound policy, have supposed, that the court of Versailles had neglected Santa Cruz, merely because they wished to abandon the small islands, in order to unite all their strength, industry, and population, in the large ones; but this is a mistaken notion: this determination, on the contrary, arose from the farmers of the revenue, who found, that the contraband trade of Santa Cruz with St. Thomas was detrimental to their interests. The spirit of finance hath in all times been injurious to commerce; it hath destroyed the source from whence it sprang. Santa Cruz continued without inhabitants, and without cultivation, till 1733, when it was sold by France to Denmark for 738,000 livres (30,750l.). Soon after the Danes built there the fortress of Christianstadt.