Page:Mexico (1829) Volumes 1 and 2.djvu/369

MEXICO. 329 " The amount of the trade of Mexico in 1827," I have stated, that the first effect of the Revolution of 1821 was to occa- sioi a sudden decrease in the commercial intercourse of Mex- ico with Europe; which was reduced, in three successive ye/rs, from Twenty-one millions and a half of dollars, (the aCniual average value up to 1821,) to Seventeen, Fourteen, and Six millions of dollars, to which it fell, at Veracruz, in 1823. Allowing three millions more for the exports and imports of A.lvarado and Tampico, we shall find the bona fide trade of Mexico, in 1823, not to have exceeded nine millions of dolars. This sudden, and apparently imnatural diminution in the consumption of the country, at the very moment when it was first allowed to taste the advantages of a free trade with Europe, is explained, in part, by the simultaneous removal of those, by whom the commercial wants of Mexico had been previously supplied, and by the time required by foreign ad- venturers in order to make arrangements for entering upon a field, which was entirely new to them. The whole of the year 1822, and a great part of 1823, were consumed in these arrangements, which were rendered very complicated by the necessity of opening some new line of communication with the Interior ; Veracruz having be- come nearly useless as a port, in consequence of its vicinity to the Castle of Uloa. The Old Spaniards too, who naturally relinquished with reluctance their hold upon the country, were still engaged in winding up their affairs ; and, while this state of transition lasted, there was little to animate foreign speculators : nor was it until the commencement of 1824, that they acquired sufficient confidence in the stability of the new institutions of the country, and a sufficient knowledge of the most obvious channels of communication, to enter upon a commercial inter- course with Mexico, with any sort of activity.