the northern province, both by reason of its varied products and of its frontier position.[1]
The plan of April 21st for foreign colonization may be disposed of, since I have no space to give the document in full, with the remark that it was utilized by the government in preparing the regulations of 1828, in which many of its twenty-eight articles were more or less fully embodied.[2] To a great extent the same remark may be applied to the plan of May 30th for national colonization or settlement by Mexicans. But this plan contained certain elements intended for the special benefit of the Californias, and therefore not included in the general regulations which applied to all Mexican territory. It was proposed not only to grant lands to Mexican colonists, but to pay the expenses of their journey, a daily ration and monthly sum of three or four dollars to each family for three years, besides furnishing live-stock and tools; or in case the settler were not a farmer, he was to receive expenses of the journey, necessary tools, a house lot, and rations for one year. This aid it was thought might be furnished without burden to the treasury, by utilizing the accumulations of mission capital. It was deemed desirable to favor settlements on the coast islands; and to set apart one of them as a penal colony, not for Mexico, but for California.[3]
Another scheme of the junta, though pertaining to commerce, may as well be mentioned here, since it never went into practical effect. It was a politico-mercantile plan for the organization of a Compañía
- ↑ Jan. 6, 1825, José Argüello wrote to Captain Guerra from Guadalajara that a board had been established in Mexico to make regulations for Cal. Guerra, Doc., MS., vi. 97. The dictámen, so far as it relates to Indian policy, is incidentally quoted by Manuel Castañares in an address of March 30, 1844, to Congress. Castañares, Col. Doc., 12, 14, 50. Both Alvarado, Hist. Cal., MS., i. 122-3, 233-6, and Vallejo, Hist. Cal., MS., i. 299-300, speak of Sola as the leading spirit of the junta, which devised many liberal and enthusiastic measures without the slightest idea as to where the money was to come from. 'Fifty years later,' says Alvarado, 'in the hands of energetic men backed by coin, some of these plans might have proved successful.'
- ↑ See chap. ii. this vol. for reglamento of 1828.
- ↑ There are several other items, but as the recommendations were never adopted, it seems unnecessary to notice them.
