Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 2.djvu/104

78 which it seems impossible to ameliorate, and yet whose wants or luxuries do not afford them support. It is hard to suffer hunger and to see our dependants die of starvation, when we are both able and willing to work for wages but can obtain no work upon which to exercise our ingenuity or our hands. It is frightful to reflect, says Mr. Carlyle, in one of his admirable essays, that there is hardly an English horse, in a condition to labor for his owner, that is deprived of food and lodging, whilst thousands of human beings rise daily from their obscure and comfortless dens in the British isles, who do not know how they shall obtain employment for the day by which they may purchase a meal.

To this dismal account of European suffering, the condition of the American continent affords the best reply. The answer and the remedy are both displayed in the social and political institutions, as well as in the boundless unoccupied and prolific tracts of our country. Labor cries out for work and recompense from the Old World, whilst the New displays her soil, her mines, her commerce and her trades, as the best alms that one nation can bestow on another, because they come direct from God and are the reward of meritorious industry. Before such a tribunal the modern demagogue of continental Europe shrinks into insignificance, and the laws of labor are effectually vindicated.

The have been wrought from the earliest periods. Long before the advent of the Spaniards, the natives of Mexico, like those of Peru, were acquainted with the use of metals. Nor were they contented with such specimens as they found scattered at random on the surface of the earth or in the ravines of mountain torrents, but had already learned to dig shafts, pierce galleries, form needful implements, and trace the metallic veins in the hearts of mountains. We know that they possessed gold, silver, lead, tin, copper and cinnabar. Beautiful samples of jewelry were wrought by them, and gold and silver vases, constructed in Mexico, were sent to Spain by the conquerors, as testimonials of the mineral wealth of the country. The dependant tribes paid their tributes to the sovereign in a species of metallic currency, which though not stamped by royal order, was yet the representative of a standard value. The exact position of all the mines from which these treasures were derived by the Aztecs is not certainly known at the present day, but as the natives were often compelled to indicate some of the sources of their riches to the conquerors there is little doubt that the present mineral district of the republic is that from which they procured their chief supplies.