Page:Pictures of life in Mexico Vol 1.djvu/235

Rh of Mexico with other nations has at present led to few salutary or promising results. Exclusiveness and short-sighted suspicion still remain the governing features of commercial policy: liberality, innovation, and improvement being alike carefully guarded against. Foreign productions of importance are excluded as ruinous; and the country is effectually protected against honourable traffic—though left open to the lawless proceedings of swindlers and smugglers of every grade.

The evils of this narrow policy, therefore, are continually manifest in every class of the community: the means of profitable interchange are comparatively closed to the wealthy, duties and taxes being most overwhelming; and the poor are oppressed, meanwhile, by the scantiness of employment, and the high prices of all articles which would minister to their comfort. Thus a poor Mexican has to pay for a woollen blanket, or a female for a cotton reboso, as large a sum as would purchase five precisely similar articles; if the productions of Europe and America were admitted on reasonable terms. Mechanical processes are all at an extremely low ebb: even their glass and leather articles are very inferior. Their