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This extraordinary increase was due, in part, to the establishment of the monopoly of tobacco, which took place in 1764; but infinitely more, to that relaxation in the Colonial Policy of the Mother country, to which I have alluded in the Fourth Section of the First Book, and to the encouragement given to the mining interests by the reduction of the price of quicksilver, from eighty-four to sixty-four dollars the quintal. The revenue rose as the price of this important article fell, and, as an impulse was given to the Colonies, by the removal of some of the earlier restrictions upon their trade. Had Spain profited by the lesson, and extended her concessions, in proportion as she found less reason to regard them as incompatible with her own interests, her position, at the present day, might have been very different from what it is.

The principal sources of the revenue of Mexico at that time were:—