Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain

The numbers in this Table relate to an average of the five years preceding 1789. In this period the revenue of New Spain did not exceed eighteen millions of piastres. The first class of imposts includes more than a half of the total receipts; and the expences of collection amount to 12 per cent. of the gross produce. The second class contains such branches as are the object of a particular monopoly, as the royal farm of tobacco, the sale of mercury and cards on account of the crown. With respect to this part of the public receipts the Table presents a result which does not appear accurate; for it states the expences of management and collection at 44 per cent. It is probable that the persons entrusted with drawing up this Table of the finances of Mexico, have confounded under this head the salaries of the officers, with the expences of manufactures and other unknown charges. We have already explained with the greatest minuteness, every thing connected with the tobacco management; we have seen that the salaries of the officers do not consume upon the whole more than 800,000 piastres in a gross produce of more than seven millions and a half of piastres. Adding to the salaries of officers a few expences of management disguised under the vague denomination of expences of administration, we may estimate the expence of collection at 25 per cent. The

economy introduced into the collection of taxes on the clergy form a singular contrast to the horrible depredation which takes place in the management of corporation property. I should be tempted to believe that in general the expence of collection in Mexico amounts to 16 or 18 per cent. of the gross receipts. The prodigious number of officers, the greatest idleness in those who fill the highest offices, the utmost complication in the administration of the finances, render the collection of taxes as slow and difficult as expensive to the Mexican public.

According to the Table of the finances drawn up by order of the Count de Revillagigedo, the expences of government were on an average between 1784 and 1789 as follows:

Various expences of fortifications, ships of war stationed at Vera

Remains, revenue of the king, which

may be transmitted to the mo

ther conntry

13,884,336

5,998,007

During the administration of the last viceroys Don Josef de Yturigarray, in the beginning of the year 1803, a new Table of the finance, was drawn up, of which the general result differs very little from that of the year 1790. The following is the detail of that budget in which the distribution of the different articles of the public expence leaves much to be desired with respect to order and perspicuity.

Budget of the public revenue of New Spain for the year 1803.

Application of receipts.. Piastres. Piastres.

The receipts amount to
Expences.

I. Expence of adminis

tration.

Sueldos de hacienda, salaries of the viceroy, of the commandant general of the provincias internas, of the intendants, of the secretaries attached to the different chiefs, pensions of the governors retired from service (jubilados).