xxviii

INTRODUCTION.

may compensate for many errors and many difficulties; and if such occur at first, as in all probability they may, I cannot but indulge sanguine expectations that zeal, patience and skill will overcome them, and that finally the enterprise will be as profitable as the risks encountered may fairly require it should be.

I freely admit that I am deeply interested in the success of these adventures, that I feel an unusual degree of anxiety for their success, and that to this end I shall gladly contribute the utmost exertion of my humble efforts. I may therefore be considered a partial adviser. I have endeavoured, however, to leave the facts as I found them, standing on authority which has not been questioned. From these, judicious readers will draw their own conclu

sions.

Bedford Row, 12th March, 1824.

JOHN TAYLOR.

ΤΟ

THE SOVEREIGN CONGRESS

OF

MEXICO.

SINCE the completion of this work, I have been favoured with the following extract of a memorial presented to the Government of Mexico at a very late period, by an enlightened and liberal minister of that country, Don Lucas Alaman, and which I have the greatest pleasure in making public. It is remarkable for the justness of the views it gives of the means of encouraging their great sources of national wealth; and if such principles are acknowledged and acted upon, which there is no good reason to doubt, I will venture to predict that foreign capital will be employed with confidence, and with benefit to the country where it is employed as well as to that which may supply it, the advantage to each particular Company who may

undertake mines, being of course more or less as they may prudently and skilfully manage their affairs. J. T.

Extract from the Report of the Minister for Foreign Affairs and of the Interior to the Sovereign Constituent Congress assembled in Mexico, 1st November 1823, (received by a late arrival from Mexico.)

ARTICLE INDUSTRY.

MINES.

It is a principle admitted by all writers on political economy, that the most direct encouragement that can be given to agriculture and to industry, is to facilitate the consumption of the produce of the one, and the sale of the manufactures of the other. If the mines be considered amongst us under this point of view, it will be found that nothing contributes so much as they do to the prosperity of those essential branches of the public riches. The great number of people that are occupied in them, the animals that are employed in the working of the machinery, and in transporting the ores, the consumption that arises therefrom of grain, as well as of soap, paper, iron, &c., give a powerful impulse to agriculture, the arts, and to commerce. If practical illustration be necessary to prove those facts, which are doubted only by men whose minds are preoccupied by the paradoxical assertions of systematic economists, they may be found on a comparison of the state of our mining provinces,

J S

such as Guanaxuato and Zacatecas, previous to the year 1810 and at the present period. Abundance and prosperity then reigned throughout both of them. The agriculturist found in those famous reales (districts) a ready and certain market for his produce; the smith, the carpenter, the mason, a constant employment for his industry; the merchant an extensive consumption for the goods which he introduced; and the treasures drawn from the bowels of the earth were distributed throughout and revivified the most distant provinces in payment for the soap, wood, salt, magistral, horses and mules, that were brought from all parts. The nature of our ores is also a powerful cause of these happy results; they are generally poor in metal, and most abundant in quantity, and require for their manufacture a great quantity of machinery and ingredients; and it may therefore be said that the miner merely draws forth funds to distribute them freely among the labourers, merchants and artisans; and we must naturally conclude that the prosperity of these classes depends principally upon the impulse given to them by the mines, which in our notion are thus the acting principle of all the other branches of industry.

From this it is to be inferred that the encouragement which is given to the former revolves indirectly in favour of the latter; and if it be intended to animate the one, we must begin by giving a stimulus to the other. These principles

xxxii

MEMORIAL TO CONGRESS.

occasioned the reduction of duties granted by the Spanish Cortes, and confirmed by the Provincial Junta, a reduction that has unexpectedly preserved the mines at this time, and which may greatly contribute to re-establish them.

We may flatter ourselves that we shall speedily see them once more in a flourishing condition. Several foreign capitalists are ready to invest large funds in draining and working the principal mines, which, from the disastrous consequences of the war, have been overflowed and not regularly worked. The steam engines, which it is intended to introduce, and of which two are now erecting, the one in Temascaltepec and the other in Real de Catorce, will powerfully contribute to so important a result. The former Sovereign Congress, with the intention of facilitating contracts of supply with opulent foreigners, with whom some have already been concluded, abolished the laws and articles of the ordinance which prohibited them from acquiring property in mines, although it wisely limited the power which it granted to them for that purpose to those mines only which they may supply, without being able to denounce others, or to attempt to discover new ones. This measure will be a new stimulus to the introduction of funds for the supply of this branch, which it so much needs, and which it cannot procure by other means.

The Tribunal of Mines," which, according to the terms of its constitution ought to have been a