Page:Mexico as it was and as it is.djvu/430

Rh so imprisoned, both by the nature of its territory, and its own mismanagement.

I have thus spoken of some of the causes of Mexican adversity; let me go further. It has been a difficult thing to make the Mexicans believe that they possessed any other kind of wealth but money or mines. It was difficult to make them understand that they were poor, in the midst of gold and silver, and that the wealthiest nations were England and Holland, the one without a precious mine in her soil, the other redeemed from the washes of the sea.

In 1833, they were at the expense of $17,000,000 for their army, and in 1841, of $8,000,000, with only between seven and eight millions of people, and no foreign war; and while they were furnishing from their mines the circulating medium of the world, they thought themselves exceedingly successful, if they could borrow money at an interest of fifty or even sixty per cent.

Again, by the reduction of the export duty, on the precious metals, to three per cent., and the lax administration of the Custom Houses in the year from 1821 to 1822, $66,000,000 passed through the ports regularly to foreign nations—besides what was secretly taken from the country—which was thus depleted, in one twelvemonth, of a mass of wealth that would have assured it prosperity for years. The consequence was a paper money system, that soon lost its credit, and produced the most disastrous results.

Again, they allowed no liberty of worship. They forbade foreigners to acquire real estate or freehold interests of any kind;—they clogged their naturalization laws with odious incumbrances to emigrants;—they threw a thousand obstacles in the way of the marriage and even burial of foreigners;—and, as to the "protection" afforded by their tribunals, it was too notoriously infamous to be patiently spoken of.

Again, after severe losses by the export of the precious metals, a short-sighted policy was adopted by legislators in regard to commerce. With fair promises and plausible declarations, they professed a spirit of "free trade," while, at the same moment, there was no invention that ingenuity could devise, which they did not throw in the way of merchants. They commenced the prohibitory system. They imposed duties to the amount of double or triple the value of imports, allowing but short indulgence on the bonds; and the result was, that there were no cash sales. This operated as a direct bounty in favor of contraband, not only in the importation of merchandise, but in the export of silver; at the same time that by these high duties the people were indirectly taxed to an exorbitant degree, and the nation was deprived of a large revenue, which she might have derived from moderate levies that would not have tempted to illicit trade.

We are taught to regard this as an era of regeneration in the Government of Mexico.