Page:Mexico (1829) Volumes 1 and 2.djvu/529

 

A.

resources of the Royal Treasury being exhausted by the enormous expenditure which has lately been required, your Excellency, on assuming the reins of Government, was deprived of the means of providing for the safety of the provinces committed to your charge. The only mode of relieving the necessities of the country, appears to be to grant permission to the English merchants to introduce their manufactures into the town, and to re-export the produce of the Interior, by which the revenue will be at once increased, and an impulse given to industry and trade.

Your Excellency possesses powers sufficient for the adoption of any measures that the safety of the country may require, but a natural desire to ensure the result of these measures, by adapting them to the peculiar situation of the Vice-royalty, induced your Excellency to consult the Cabildo of this city, and the Tribunal of the Real Consulado, before any definitive resolution was taken.

The intentions of your Excellency had barely transpired, when several of the merchants manifested their discontent and dissatisfaction. Groups of European shopkeepers were formed in all the public places, who, disguising their jealousy and personal apprehensions under the most specious pretences, affected to deplore, as a public calamity, the diminution of the profits, which they have hitherto derived from the contraband trade. At one time, with hypocritical warmth, they lamented the fatal blow which the interests of the Mother-country were about to receive, and at another, they predicted the ruin of the colony, and the total destruction of its commerce: others again announced the universal distress that the free exportation of the precious metals would bring upon us, and pretended to feel a lively interest in the fate of our native artisans (whom they have always hitherto despised), endeavouring to enlist in their cause the sacred name of religion, and the interests of morality.