When we read the excellent work on agrarian laws, presented to the council of Castille. in 1795*, we perceive that notwithstanding the difference of climate and other local circumstances, Mexican agriculture is fettered by the same political causes, which have impeded the progress of industry in the Peninsula. All the vices of the feudal government have passed from the one hemisphere to the other; and in Mexico these abuses have been so much the more dangerous in their effects, as it has been more difficult to the supreme authority to remedy the evil, and display its energy at an immense distance. The property of New Spain, like that of Old Spain, is in a great measure in the hands of a few powerful families, who have gradually absorbed the smaller estates. In America as well as Europe, large commons are condemned to the pasturage of cattle, and to perpetual sterility. As to the clergy and their influence on society, the two continents are not in the same circumstances; for the clergy are much less numerous in Spanish America, than in the Peninsula. The religious missionaries have there contributed to extend the progress of agriculture among barbarous tribes. The

* M. de Laborde has given a translation of this Memoir, in the fourth volume of his Itineraire descriptif de l'Espagne, p. 103-294.

introduction of mayorazgos, and the degradation and extreme poverty of the Indians are more prejudicial to industry than the mortmain of the clergy.

The ancient legislature of Castille prohibited convents from possessing real property; and although this wise law has been frequently infringed, the clergy could not acquire very considerable property in a country where devotion does not exercise the same empire over the mind as in Spain, Portugal, and Italy. Since the suppression of the order of the Jesuits, few estates belong to the Mexican clergy; and their real wealth as we have already stated, consists in tithes and capitals laid out on the farms of small cultivators. These capitals are usefully directed and increase the productive power of the national labour.

It is surprizing to see that the greatest number of the convents founded since the 16th century in every part of Spanish America, are all crowded together in towns. Had they been spread throughout the country and placed on the ridges of the Cordilleras, they might have possessed that salutary influence on cultivation, of which the effects have been felt on the North of Europe, on the banks of the Rhine, and on the mountains of the Alps. Those who have studied history, know that in the time of Philip the

Second, the monks were no longer like those of the 9th century. The luxury of towns, and the climate of the Indies are unfavourable to that austerity of life, and that spirit of order for which the first monastical institutions were characterized; and when we cross the mountainous deserts of Mexico, we regret that those solitary asylums in which the traveller receives assistance from religious hospitality in Europe, are no where to be found.

CHAPTER XI.

State of the Mines of New Spain Produce of Gold and Silver.-Mean value of the produce of the Mines.— Annual consumption of Mercury in the process of Amalgamation.-Quantity of the Precious Metals which have since the conquest of Mexico, flowed from the one Continent into

the other.

AFTER a careful examination of the Mexican agriculture as the first source of the natural wealth and prosperity of the inhabitants, it remains for us to exhibit a view of the mineral productions which for two centuries and a half have been the object of working the mines of New Spain. This view is exceedingly brilliant to the eyes of those who calculate merely according to the nominal value of things, but is much less so to those who consider the intrinsic worth of the metals, their relative utility, and the influence which they possess on manufacturing industry. The mountains of the New Continent like the mountains of the old, contain iron, copper, lead, and a great number of other mineral substances, indispensible to agriculture and the arts. If the labour of man has in America been almost exclusively directed to the extraction of gold and silver, it is because the members of a society

act from very different considerations from those which ought to influence the whole society. Whenever the soil can produce both indigo and maize, the former prevails over the latter, although the general interest requires a preference to be given to those vegetables which supply nourishment to man over those which are merely objects of exchange with strangers. In the same manner, the mines of iron or lead on the ridge of the Cordilleras, notwithstanding their richness, continue to be neglected, because almost the whole attention of the colonists is directed to veins of gold and silver, even when they exhibit on trial, but small indications of abundance. Such is the attraction of those precious metals which by a general convention have become the representatives of labour and subsistence.

No doubt the Mexican nation can procure by means of foreign commerce, all the articles which are supplied to them by their own country; but in the midst of great wealth in gold and silver, want is severely felt whenever the commerce with the mother country or other parts of Europe or Asia has suffered any interruption, whenever a war throws obstacles in the way of maritime communication. From 25 to 30 millions of piastres are sometimes heaped up in Mexico, while the manufacturers and miners are suffering from the want of steel, iron, and mercury. A few years before my arrival in