Page:Mexico (1829) Volumes 1 and 2.djvu/112

i80 MEXICO. name of Spaniard now entails upon those, who formerly found it the only passport to preferment : but the violence of the re-action, is perhaps the best proof of the excess of the evils by which it was occasioned. There can be little doubt, that the Spanish Government fomented this mutual antipathy between the two most influ- ential classes of its subjects, on the same principle that led it to encourage the distinctions of caste, and colour, which I have mentioned in the second section of this book. This was not the case, however, with the other abuses which I have had occasion to enumerate. Wherever her financial in- terests were at stake, the Mother country was remarkably vigilant, but then she, but too frequently, took a wrong mode of effecting what she had in view. Instead of attempting a reform by introducing into the general system something like simplicity, and uniformity of plan, every succeeding year rendered the machinery still more complicated. Whenever abuses were discovered in any office, a new office was created, as the only means of correcting them ; thus, wheel within wheel was added, and check upon check established, until the action of the whole was impeded, and the confusion became so great, that nothing could remedy it. Mexico, the most important of all the Colonies, only remitted six millions of dollars annu- ally to the Peninsula ; the remainder of a revenue of twenty millions of doUars, was swallowed up, either by the govern- ment charges, which (including dilapidations) amounted to eleven millions, or, by remittances to other Colonies, (the Havanna and the Phillippine Islands,) the revenues of which did not cover the expenditure. Under such a system it was not to be expected that much should be done for the improvement of the people, destined to be ruled by it. Spain felt that her power depended, in a great measure, upon their ignorance. — By disseminating the blessings of education amongst her subjects, she would, vir- tually, have undermined her own authority, and made them impatient of a yoke, which comparison would have rendered