Page:Mexico (1829) Volumes 1 and 2.djvu/311

 M EXI CO. which the Imperial Government was afterwards reduced, com- pelled him again to have recourse to the tax upon houses, which was not definitively suppressed until 1823. Forced loans were likewise resorted to during his reign, and an attempt made to bring paper money into circulation, which completely failed, as the paper only obtained a partial currency by the sacrifice of two-thirds of its nominal value. Nothing can be more melancholy than the account given by the two first Mexican Ministers of Finance, (Don Antonio Medina, and Don Francisco Arillaga,) of the state to which the Revenue was reduced in the years 1822 and 1823. In the confusion that ensued upon the dissolution of the Vicere- gal Government, the Government Archives were plundered as the best mode of concealing former dilapidations ; the trustees of the funds of Obras pias, and those charged with judicial deposits, left the country with whatever money they could secure : the Provinces seized upon their own revenues, of which they refused to give any account ; and the Government officers, fattening upon the public distress, either would not, or could not, make the smallest remittances. In October, 1822, Medina stated in his Report to Con- gress, that, " not only was the pay of the troops in arrear in the Capital, but on the point of being suspended altogether ; and that, in the Provinces, it must be reduced from the total want of resources." In a defence of his conduct before the Congress, (3d Sep- tember, 1823,) the same Minister added : " That his orders for the collection of the necessary data for the formation of a new plan of Finance, had not been complied with ; and that he regarded it as extremely difficult to enforce obedience to them, because their execution depended upon a multitude of men, some too ignorant to give the information required, — others interested in suppressing it, in order to perpetuate abuses ; and all full of that languor, to which they had been accustomed by the routine of the old system."