Page:Mexico (1829) Volumes 1 and 2.djvu/559

 APPEN DIX. 519 miean time, an infinity of smallei' towns are left, unavoidably, at the miercy of the banditti : the roads are ours only as long as a division is pjassing over them ; and the Insurgents, who are infinitely superior to U6S in number, are masters of the largest proportion of the cultivated lamds : the consequence is that trade is at an end ; agriculture lan- giuishes ; the mines are abandoned ; all our resources exhausted ; the trfoops wearied out ; the loyal discouraged ; the rich in dismay ; in short, miisery increases daily, and the State is in danger. As the armed bands of the rebels are constantly in motion, without amy fixed place of residence, and are principally composed of men be- lomging to the Haciendas, the trapiches, and the mines, used to live in thie open air, and on horseback, and accustomed to the transition from viicious indulgence to frugality and want, they require no regular admi- niistration. AVithout plan or calculation they wander over the coun- try, eating and drinking where they can, and robbing, plundering, amd devastating all that falls in their way : now uniting in large masses, now dividing into insignificant parties, but always doing us incalculable miischief. It is the facility which this mode of life affords them for satis- fyiing the wants of the moment, and consulting either the caprice of the hoiur, or the desire of vengeance, that endears to them this predatory existence : blood flows unceasingly : the war is perpetuated, and the friuit is never to be attained. 'The continuation of such a contest is the worst evil that we can expe- riemce, and the efi"ects of the ruin which it entails upon us will hardly be lesis felt in the Peninsula than here. The war, besides the fatal con- sequences with which it must always be attended, detains in this country th(8 few Europeans who have any thing still to lose, and prevents them either from assisting the Government, or even subsisting, with comfort, themselves : the war dries up the very sources of our prosperity : it ren- ders contributions a mere name, by destroying those branches of industry upion which they ought to be levied : it diminish(2s our population, and converts what still remains of it into robbers and assassins : the war teatches the Insurgents, to our cost, the art of making it with success, and gives them but too good a knowledge of their advantages in point of number and resources. The war strengthens and propagates the desire of Independence, hold- ing; out a constant hope of our destruction, a longing desire for which (I must again assure your Excellency) is general amongst all classes, and hasi penetrated into every corner of the kingdom. The war affords the Insurgents an opportunity of knowing Foreign Powers, with whom they form connexions, and from whom they receive aid : the war, in fine, destroys, in detail, our little army, either by the fruitless fatigues of a campaign under the present system, or by exposing it to the influence of seduction, to which the apparent remoteness of our success gives but too much room, and the effects of which are felt even