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- PROGRESS OF OPINION.

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Within these twenty years, the Spanish and Portuguese settlements of the New Continent have experienced considerable changes in their moral and political state; and the want of education and knowledge has begun to be felt with the increasing population and prosperity. The free trade with neutrals, which the Court of Madrid, yielding to imperious circumstances, has from time to time granted to the island of Cuba, the coast of Caraccas, the ports of Vera Cruz and Monte Video, has brought the colonists into contact with the AngloAmericans, the French, the English, and the Danes; the colonists have formed the most correct ideas respecting the state of Spain, compared with the other powers of Europe; and the American youth, sacrificing part of their national prejudices, have formed a marked predilection for those nations whose cultivation is further advanced than that of the European Spaniards. In these circumstances, we are not to be astonished, that the political movements which have taken place in Europe since 1789, have excited the liveliest interest among a people who have long been aspiring to rights, the privation of which is both an obstacle to the public prosperity, and a source of resentment against the Mother Country.

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 souls. 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 narrow strip succeed tracts of uncultivated ground, on which we scarcely find above one person to the square mile. 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 caste of Whites (Europeans or Creoles), it is even discoverable among the Indians.

If, in the present state of things, the caste of Whites is the only one in which we find any thing like intellectual cultivation, it is also the only one which possesses great wealth. This wealth is unfortunately still more unequally distributed in Mexico than in the capitania general of Caraccas, the Havannah, and especially Peru. At Caraccas, the heads of the richest families

DISTRIBUTION OF PROPERTY.

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possess an income of about 8,000. In the island of Cuba we find incomes of from 25,0007. to 30,000%. In these two industrious colonies agriculture has founded more considerable fortunes than have been accumulated by the working of the mines in Peru. At Lima an annual income of

30,000/. is very rare. I know in reality of no Peruvian family in the possession of a fixed and sure revenue of 50,000l. But in New Spain there are individuals who possess no mines, whose income amounts to 40,000. The family of the Count de la Valenciana, for example, possesses alone, on the ridge of the Cordillera, a property worth more than a million sterling, without including the mine of Valenciana near Guanaxuato, which, communibus annis, yields a net revenue of 60,000. This family, of which the present head, the young Count de la Valenciana, is distinguished for a generous character and a noble desire of instruction, is divided into only three branches ; and they possess all together, even in years when the mine is not very lucrative, a revenue of more than 90,000. The Count de Regla, whose youngest son, the Marquis de San Christobal*, distinguished himself at Paris for his physical and physiological knowledge, constructed at the Havannah, at his

* M. Terreros (this is the name by which this modest savant is known in France) preferred for a long time the instruction which his abode at Paris enabled him to procure, to the great fortune which he could only enjoy living in Mexico.

own expense, of acajou and cedar (cedrella) wood, two vessels of the line of the largest size, which he presented to his sovereign. It was the vein of la Biscaina, near Pachuca, which laid the foundation of the fortune of the house of Regla. The family of Fagoaga, well known for its beneficence, intelligence, and zeal for the public good, exhibits the example of the greatest wealth which was ever derived from a mine. A single vein which the family of the Marquis of Fagoaga possesses in the district of Sombrerete, left, in five or six months, all charges deducted, a net profit of upwards of 800,0007.

From these data one would suppose there existed capitals in the Mexican families infinitely greater than what are really observed. The deceased Count de la Valenciana, the first of the title, sometimes drew from his mine alone, in one year, a net revenue of no less than 250,000. This annual income, during the last twenty-five years of his life, was never below from 80,000l. to 125,0007.; and yet this extraordinary man, who came without any fortune to America, and who continued to live with great simplicity, left behind him at his death, besides his mine, which is the richest in the world, in property and capital, only about 400,000l. This fact, which may be relied on, will not surprise those who are acquainted with the internal management of the great Mexican houses. Money rapidly gained is as rapidly spent. The working of mines

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becomes a game, in which they embark with unbounded passion. The rich proprietors of mines lavish immense sums on quacks, who engage them in new undertakings in the most remote provinces. In a country where the works are conducted on such an extravagant scale, that the shaft of a mine frequently requires 80,000l. to pierce, the bad success of a rash project may, in a few years, absorb all that was gained in working the richest veins. We must add, that from the internal disorder which prevails in most of the great houses of both Old and New Spain, the head of a family is not unfrequently straitened with a revenue of 20,000., though he display no other luxury than that of numerous yokes of mules.

The mines have undoubtedly been the principal sources of the great fortunes of Mexico. Many miners have laid out their wealth in purchasing land, and have devoted themselves with great zeal to agriculture. But there is also a considerable number of powerful families who have never had the working of any very lucrative mines. Such are the rich descendants of Cortez, or the Marquis del Valle. The Duke of Monteleone, a Neapolitan nobleman, who is now the head of the house of Cortez, possesses magnificent estates in the province of Oaxaca, near Toluca, and at Cuernavaca. The net produce of his rents is now no more than 23,0007., the king having deprived the duke of the collection of the alcavalus and the duties on tobacco.

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