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6 Asiático-Mexicana, protective of Californian industrial development. Monterey was to be a grand commercial centre; and not only was California to be saved from all possibility of foreign aggression, but the whole trade of the Pacific was to be wrested from American and English lands. The author of the project, Tamariz, aimed at a revival of the old Philippine trade, with vastly augmented facilities and profits; and he pictured California in glowing colors as a veritable paradise abounding in all good things, and better fitted than any other spot on earth for its grand destiny. "Fortunate the Californians in the midst of the promised land; happy the provinces that adjoin that land; lucky even the hemisphere that contains it," writes the enthusiastic Mexican in substance page after page. The scheme was a grand one on paper – too grand to go any further; for though approved by the famous junta, and favored apparently by president, cabinet, and congress, it was never heard of so far as I know after 1827.

In addition to the acts of the president and junta de fomento, there is nothing to be noted bearing on my present topic, beyond a few minor routine communications of the ministers in the different departments, in one of which the Californians were showered with flattery, even if they got no more substantial tokens of attention.