Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 1.djvu/279

Rh The poor as well as the rich received his paternal notice. He enquired into their wants and studied their interests. One of his most beneficent schemes was the erection of a Monte Pio, for their relief, yet the sum he destined for this object was withheld by the court and used for the payment of royal debts. Agriculture, horticulture and botany were especially fostered by this enlightened nobleman. He carried out the project of his predecessor by founding the botanical garden, and liberally rewarded and encouraged the pupils of this establishment, for he deemed the rich vegetable resources of Mexico quite as worthy of national attention as the mines which had hitherto absorbed the public interest. Literature, too, did not escape his fostering care, as far as the jealous rules of the Inquisition and of royal policy permitted its liberal encouragement by a viceroy. He found the streets of the capital and its suburbs badly paved and kept, and he rigidly enforced all the police regulations which were necessary for their purity and safety. As he knew that one of the best means of developing and binding together the provinces of the empire, was the construction of substantial and secure roads,—he proposed that the highways to Vera Cruz, Acapulco, Meztitlan de la Sierra, and Toluca, should be reconstructed in the most enduring manner. But the Junta Superior de Hacienda opposed the measure, and the count was obliged to expend, from his own purse, the requisite sums for the most important repairs. He established weekly posts between the capitals of the Intendencies;—regulated and restricted the cutting of timber in the adjacent mountains;—established a professorship of anatomy in the Hospital de Naturales; destroyed the provincial militia system and formed regular corps out of the best veterans found in the ranks. Knowing the difficulty with which the poor or uninfluential reached the ear of their Mexican governors, he placed a locked case in one of the halls of his palace into which all persons were at liberty to throw their memorials designed for the viceroy's scrutiny. It was, in reality, a secret mode of espionage, but it brought to the count's knowledge many an important fact which he would never have learned through the ordinary channels of the court. Without this secret chest, whose key was never out of his possession, Revilla-Gigedo, with all his personal industry, might never have comprehended the actual condition of Mexico, or, have adopted the numerous measures for its improvement which distinguished his reign.

Besides this provident measure for the internal safety and progressive comfort of New Spain, the count directed his attention to