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This immense sum in the hands of the land proprietors, (haciendados) and hypotecated on real property, was on the point of being withdrawn from the Mexican agriculture in 1804. The ministry of Spain not knowing how a national bankruptcy brought on by the superabundance of paper money (vales) could possibly be avoided, ventured upon a very hazardous operation. A royal decree was issued on the 26th December, 1804, appointing not only the estates of the Mexican clergy to be sold, but also all the capitals belonging to ecclesiastics, to be recovered and sent into Spain, to be there applied in extinction of the royal paper (caxa de consolidacion de vales reales). The council of finance, in which the viceroy presides, and which bears the title of Junta Superior de Real Hacienda, instead of opposing this decree, and representing to the Sovereign the injury which its execution would occasion to the agriculture and prosperity of the inhabitants, began boldly to levy the money. The resistance however, was so strong on the part of the proprietors, that from May 1805, to June 1806, not more than the comparatively small sum of 1,200,000 piastres could be recovered. It is to be hoped that Ministers well informed as to the true interests of the state will have since put an end to an operation, the fatal effects of which would have been at last severely felt..

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

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