Page:Vol 6 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/512

492 the loss of Texas in her memory, and the bitter feelings engendered thereby, citizens of the United States were for a long time excluded from becoming colonization immigrants; nor is it asserting too much to say that settlers of any other nationality are preferred to the present day.

Mexico thinks she wants population, but she will get enough in time without the aid of immigration and colonization societies; at all events, she can do better with her money than by paying the passage to her shores of European paupers.

If a large and superior foreign population flocks in, the native Mexicans will be overwhelmed, thrust aside, to some extent absorbed, and for the rest extirpated.

Mexico then wants no more people from abroad in her cities or in her mines; these can take care of themselves. If she could have some of the right kind of instructors in her agricultural districts, if those who enter from abroad come as teachers in the several arts and industries, rather than as usurpers of the soil, many of the present inhabitants will be educated and improved, and thus, generation after generation, the children even of the lowest would grow in enlightenment and improved physical condition.

A history of the revenue department during colonial times down to the breaking out of the revolutionary war has been briefly given elsewhere. In the last fifty years the receipts increased from less than $7,000,000 to more than $20,000,000. From that time, owing to the paralyzation of all industries, the ordinary resources materially declined, while the expenditures, under those peculiar circumstances, necessarily increased. The government had to resort to