180,000. The national wealth, or rather the specie, of Mexico is then annually on the increase. This calculation, founded on exact data, explains the reason why the country, whose mines are the richest and most constant in their produce, does not possess a great mass of specie, and why the price of labour still remains very low there. Enormous sums are accumulated in the hands of a few individuals; but the indigence of the people is very striking to Europeans who travel through the country and the towns of the interior of Mexico. I am tempted to believe that of the 19,770,000l. which are supposed to exist in specie among the thirteen or fourteen millions of inhabitants of the Spanish colonies of continental America, 12,000,000l. or 13,000,000l. are to be found in Mexico. Although the population of this kingdom is not in the proportion of one to two to the population of the other continental colonies, its national wealth is to that of the other colonies nearly in the proportion of two to three. The estimate of 13,000,000l. gives only 21. 3s. 4d. per head; but this sum must appear too great, when we reflect, that in Spain 17. 10s. 4d., and in France 37. Os. 8d., are allowed for each inhabitant. If, in consequence of those events, of which we have examples in the history of every age, the colonies had separated from the mother country, Mexico would have lost 1,933,000/. of specie less annually, which were partly paid into the royal NATIONAL WEALTH. 91 treasury of Madrid, and partly, under the improper denomination of situados, paid into the provincial treasuries of the Havannah, Porto Rico, Pensacola, and Manilla. By allowing a free course to the national industry, by encouraging agriculture and manufactures, the importation will diminish of itself; and it will then be easy for the Mexicans to pay the value of foreign commodities with the productions of their own soil. The free cultivation of the vine and the olive on the table-land of New Spain; the free distillation of spirits from rum, rice, and the grape; the exportation of flour favoured by the making of new roads; the increase of plantations of sugar-cane, cotton, and tobacco; the working of the iron and mercury mines; and the manufacture of steel, will perhaps one day become more inexhaustible sources of wealth than all the veins of gold and silver united. Under more favourable external circumstances, the balance of trade may be favourable to New Spain, without paying the account, which has been opened for centuries between the two continents, entirely with Mexican dollars. In the present state of the trade of Vera Cruz and Acapulco, the total value of exported agricultural produce scarcely equals the value of the sugar furnished by the island of Cuba, which amounts to 1,254,000. But the importation of Mexico, which we calculate on an average at 4,333,000. annually, is an object of the very highest import ance for the commercial nations of Europe, who want an outlet for their manufactures. We shall call to mind on this occasion, 1st, That the United States of North America, whose exportation in 1802 amounted to 15,570,328., exported in 1791 only to the value of 4,115,000Z.; 2nd, That England, at the period of the greatest activity of its trade with France in 1790, only imported into that country goods to the value of 1,235,0007.; and 3rd, That the exportation from England to Portugal and Germany in 1790 did not exceed, to the former country 1,647,000/., and to the latter 2,687,000%. These data are sufficient to explain, why towards the end of the last century Great Britain made so many efforts to procure a share of the trade between the Peninsula and Mexico. The foreign commerce of New Spain, from the position of the coasts, is naturally composed of the commerce of the South Sea and that of the Atlantic Ocean. The ports on the eastern coast are Campeche, Huasacualco, Vera Cruz, Tampico, and Nuevo Santander; if we may give the name of ports to roads surrounded with shallows, or mouths of rivers shut by bars, and presenting a very slight shelter from the fury of the north winds. All the endeavours which have been made, since 1524, to discover a safer port than Vera Cruz have been fruitless. The vast shore which stretches from Nuevo Santander to the north and north-west is still very little known; and we may repeat in our EXPORTS AND IMPORTS AT VERA CRUZ, 93 days, what Cortez wrote to the Emperor Charles the Fifth, three years after the taking of Tenochtitlan, "that the secret of the coast which extends from the Rio de Panuco to Florida remains to be discovered." For centuries, almost all the maritime commerce of New Spain has been concentrated at Vera Cruz. When we bestow a glance on the chart of that port, we see that the pilots of Cortez's squadron were right in comparing the port of Vera Cruz to a pierced bag. The good anchorage in the port of Vera Cruz is between the castle of Ulua, the town, and the sand banks of La Lavandera. Near the castle we find six fathoms water; but the channel by which the port is entered is hardly four fathoms in depth, and 1260 feet in breadth. The principal objects of exportation at Vera Cruz are, gold and silver in ingots, or converted into coin or wrought plate, cochineal, sugar, flour, Mexican indigo, salted meat and other eatables, tanned hides, sarsaparilla, vanilla, jalap, soap, Campeche wood, and pimento. Their annual amount, according to the declarations at the Customs, taking an average of several years of peace, is 4,770,000. We have not mentioned the indigo of Guatimala or the cocoa of Guayaquil, which in time of war are very important articles in the trade of Vera Cruz, because we wished to confine ourselves to the indigenous productions of New Spain. The importation of Vera Cruz includes the |