to their own workmen the profitable employment of cutting and polishing Diamonds.—They also became possessed of the most valuable colored stones, and thus rendered the sovereign princes and most opulent individuals in Europe, tributary to them for the rarest and most valued of all precious substances.
Besides the annual importation of Diamonds into Europe through the ordinary channels, there have been, in the course of the last eighty or ninety years, two remarkable influxes, which require to be noticed. The first was that which took place from Brazil, before the trade was monopolized and regulated by the Portuguese government. The second occurred at the epoch of the French revolution, when the nobles and other emigrants, who took refuge in England, brought with them large quantities of diamonds, which, from the pressure of necessity, were soon brought to market, and were generally disposed of, at a low
