But can such a prudent measure be expected, either in Denmark or elsewhere, as long as the public expences shall exceed the public revenues; as long as the fatal events, which, in the present order, or rather disorder, of things, are perpetually renewed, shall compel the administration to double or to treble the burden of their unfortunate, and already overloaded subjects; as long as the councils of the sovereigns shall act without any certain views, and without any settled plan; as long as ministers shall conduct themselves, as if the empire, or their functions, were to end the next day; as long as the national treasures shall be exhausted by unparalleled depredations, and that its indigence shall only be removed by extravagant speculations, the ruinous consequences of which will not be perceived, or will be neglected, for the trifling advantages of the moment? and to make use of an energetic, but true metaphor, one that is terrifying, but symbolical of what is practised in all countries; as long as the folly, the avarice, the dissipation, the degradation, or the tyranny of the rulers, shall have rendered the treasury so much exhausted or rapacious, as to induce them to _burn the harvest, in order the more speedily to collect the price of the ashes!_ If the treasury were by chance to become wiser and more generous in Denmark than they have been, or than they are in any other part of the globe, the islands of St. Thomas, of St. John, and of Santa Cruz, might possibly prosper, and their productions might, in some measure, compensate for the trifling value of those of the mother-country.--ABBE RAYNAL, _A Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies_, 1798, pp. 256-265. III SANTA CRUZ IN GENERAL IN 1838