to transport the maize, cotton, hides, and other commodities, which the more remote provinces sent by way of tribute to the capital. The conquest rendered the state of the lower people still more deplorable. The cultivator was torn from the soil and dragged to the mountains, where the working of the mines commenced; and a great number of Indians were obliged to follow the armies, and to carry, without sufficient nourishment or repose, through mountainous woods, burdens which exceeded their strength. All Indian property, whether in land or goods, was conceived to belong to the conqueror. This,atrocious principle was even sanctioned by a law, which assigns to the Indians a small portion of ground around the newly constructed churches.

The court of Spain seeing that the new continent was depopulating very rapidly, took measures, beneficial in appearance, but which the avarice and cunning of the conquerors (conquistadores) contrived to direct against the very people whom they were intended to relieve. The system of encomiendas was introduced. The Indians, whose liberty had in vain been proclaimed by Queen Isabella, were till then slaves of the whites, who appropriated them to themselves indiscriminately. By the establishment of the encomiendas, slavery assumed a more regular form. To terminate the quarrels among the conquistadores, the remains of the conquered people were shared out; and the Indians, divided into

tribes of several hundreds of families, had masters named to them in Spain from among the soldiers. who had acquired distinction during the conquest, and from among the people of the law*, sent out by the court as a counterpoise to the usurping power of the generals. A great number of the finest encomiendas were distributed among the monks ; and religion, which, from its principles, ought to favour liberty, was itself degraded in profiting by the servitude of the peoplet. This partition of the Indians attached them to the soil; and their work became the property of the encomenderos. The slave frequently took the family name of his master. Hence many Indian families bear Spanish names, without their blood having ben in the least degree mingled with the European. The court of Madrid imagined that it had bestowed protectors on the Indians: it only made the evil worse, and gave a more systematical form to oppression.

*These powerful men frequently bore only the simple title of licenciados, from the degree which they had taken in their faculties.

↑ And yet the priests could not conceive why the people run off like children from school, as one of them emphatically has it! Su rada ignorancia les hace proceder (aunque viejos) con las modales proprios de ninos, y con tan leve motivo, como un nino se huye de la Escuela, se huye un cacique con todos sus vasalles de un I ueblo, y queda solo el missionero: tal es sa inconstancia!! Gumilla, vol. i. p. 117. Trans.

Such was the state of the Mexican cultivators in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the eighteenth their situation assume progiessively a better appearance. The families of the conquistadores are partly extinguished; and the encomiendas, considered as fiefs, were not redistributed. The viceroys, and especially the audiencias, watched over the interests of the Indians; and their liberty, and, in some provinces, their ease of circumstances even, have been gradually augmenting. It was King Charles the Third especially who, by measures equally wise and energetic, became the benefactor of the Indians. He annulled the encomiendas; and he prohibited the repartimientos, by which the corregidors arbitrarily constituted themselves the creditors, and consequently the masters, of the industry of the native, by furnishing them, at extravagant prices, with horses, mules, and clothes (ropa). The establishment of intendancies, during the ministry of the Count de Galvez, was a memorable epoqua for Indian prosperity. The minute vexations to which the cultivator was incessantly exposed from the subaltern Spanish and Indian magistracy, have singularly diminished under the active superintendance of the intendants; and the Indians begin to enjoy advantages which laws, gentle and humane in general, afforded them, but of which they were deprived in ages of barbarity and oppression. The first choice of the

persons to whom the count confided the important places of intendant or governor of a province was extremely fortunate. Among the twelve who shared the administration of the country in 1804, there was not one whom the public accused of corruption or want of integrity.

Mexico is the country of inequality. No where does there exist such a fearful difference in the distribution of fortune, civilization, cultivation of the soil, and population. The interior of the country contains four cities, which are not more than one or two days journey distant from one another, and possess a population of 35,000, 67,000, 70,000, and 135,000. The central tableland from la Puebla to Mexico, and from thence to Salamanca and Zelaya, is covered with villages and hamlets like the most cultivated parts of Lombardy. To the east and west of this narrrow stripe succeed tracts of uncultivated ground, on which cannot be found ten or twelve persons to the square league. The capital and several other cities have scientific establishments, which will bear a comparison with those of Europe. The architecture of the public and private edifices, the elegance of the furniture, the equipages, the luxury and dress of the women, the tone of society, all announce a refinement to which the nakedness, ignorance, and vulgarity of the lower people form the most striking contrast. This immense inequality of fortune does not only exist among the cast

of whites (Europeans or Creoles), it is even discoverable among the Indians.

The Mexican Indians, when we consider them en masse, offer a picture of extreme misery. Banished into the most barren districts, and indolent from nature, and more still from their political situation, the natives live only from hand to mouth. We should seek almost in vain among them for individuals who enjoy any thing like a certain mediocrity of fortune. Instead, however, of a comfortable independency, we find a few families. whose fortune appears so much the more colossal, as we least expect it among the lowest class of the people. In the intendancies of Oaxaca and Valladolid, in the valley of Toluca, and especially in the environs of the great city of la Puebla de los Angeles, we find several Indians, who under an appearance of poverty conceal considerable wealth. When I visited the small city of Cholula, an old Indian woman was buried there, who left to her children plantations of maguey (agave) worth more than 360,000 francs*. These plantations are the vineyards and sole wealth of the country. However there are no caciques at Cholula; and the Indians there are all tributary, and distinguished for their great sobriety and their gentle and peaceable manners. The manners of the Cholulans exhibit a singular contrast to those of their

* 15,000l. sterling. Trans.