Page:Mexico (1829) Volumes 1 and 2.djvu/455

 MEXICO. 415 under the conviction that water was the only obstacle to be overcome, and that the possibility of surmounting this, by the aid of English machinery, was unquestionable ! Nor was this all. The errors which Baron Humboldt's scientific eye had detected in parts of the Mining system of Mexico, were supposed to extend to the whole. The practical expe- rience of the native Miners was underrated; — their machi- nery condemned, without any previous inquiry as to its pow- ers, or the different degrees of perfection which it had attain- ed in the different Districts : — gradual improvement was pronounced too sluggish a process ; and Cornwall was drain- ed of half its population, in order to substitute an entirely new method, for that which had been endeared to the Mexi- cans by the experience of three centuries. The total failure of this attempt was the natural conse- quence of the want of consideration with which it was made. That it has failed, (although the fact seems still to be dis- puted in England,) it is impossible to deny ; nor do I believe that, under any circumstances, it could have proved perma- nently successful. Englishmen of the lower orders appear to undergo a change, on leaving their own country, (particularly if ex- posed to the contagion of a large town,) which renders them the most inefficient of human beings : nor is it by an excess of liberality, which only raises them above the sphere in which they were fitted to act, that this evil can be remedied. Indo- lence, obstinacy, and insolence, take, but too soon, the place of those qualities, by which our working classes are distin- guished at home ; and, as their prejudices are not less strong than those which they have to encounter on the part of the Natives, the result, in all cases where mutual assistance is re- quired, cannot be favourable. It is but fair to add, that the disinclination of the Mex- icans to co-operate in many of the plans suggested, has been not a little increased by the discovery that some of our