The numbers in this Table relate to an ave

rage of the five years preceding 1789. In this

period the revenue of New Spain did not exceed eighteen millions of piastres. The first class of imposts includes more than a half of the total receipts; and the expences of collection amount to 12.3 per cent. of the gross produce. The second class contains such branches as are the object of a particular monopoly, as the royal farm of tobacco, the sale of mercury and cards on account of the crown. With respect to this part of the public receipts, the Table presents a result which does not appear accurate, for it states the expences of management and collection at 44.1% per cent. It is probable that the persons entrusted with drawing up this

Table of the finances of Mexico, have con

founded under this head the salaries of the officers, with the expences of manufactures and other unknown charges. We have already

explained, with the greatest minuteness, every

thing connected with the tobacco management; we have seen that the salaries of the officers do not consume upon the whole more than 800,000

piastres in a gross produce of more than seven

millions and a half of piastres. Adding to the salaries of officers a few expences of management disguised under the vague denomination of expences of administration, we may estimate the expence of collection at 25 per cent. The economy introduced into the collection of taxes on the clergy form a singular contrast to the horrible depredation which takes place in the management of corporation property. I should be tempted to believe that in general the expence of collection in Mexico amounts to 16 | or 18 per cent. of the gross receipts. The prodigious number of officers, the greatest idleness in those who fill the highest offices, the utmost complication in the administration of . the finances, render the collection of taxes as slow and difficult as expensive to the Mexican public. According to the Table of the finances drawn up by order of the Count de Revillagigedo, the expences of government were on an average between 1784 and 1789 as follows:–

Application of the revenue of the state.

- - Piastres. Situados sent to the colonies of America and Asia - - - 3,011,664 Regular troops - - - 1,339,458 Militia - - - - o 169,140 Expence of keeping up presidios, or military posts - - - 1,053,706 Food and clothing of condemned criminals - - - - 47,268 Arsenal and dockyard of the port of San Blas - - - - 93,004 Administration of justice - - 124,294 Administration of the finances - 508,388 Pensions and other charges assigned on the masa commun - - 496,913 Missions of California and the Northwest coast of America - 42,494 Various expences of fortifications, ships of war stationed at Vera Cruz, &c. - - - 1,000,000 Total - - - 7,886,329

Now the revenue of the three classes of imposts was according to the preceding Table - - 13,884,336

Remains, revenue of the king, which may be transmitted to the mother country - - - 5,998,007 During the administration of the last viceroy, Don Josef de Yturigarray, in the beginning of the year 1803, a new Table of the finance was drawn up, of which the general result differs very little from that of the year 1790. The following is the detail of that budget, in which the distribution of the different articles of the public expense leaves much to be desired with respect to order and perspicuity.