Page:Mexico (1829) Volumes 1 and 2.djvu/377

MEXICO. capital not strictly its own. In the best regulated commu- nity it must have occasioned great embarrassment and dis- tress, but in a country of lavish expenditure and improvident habits, it almost destroyed, for the time, the possibility of im- provement. All the sources of National wealth were dried up ; and, as the period of the greatest diminution of the circulating me- dium coincided with that of the greatest depression in the mines, it is probable that, without external assistance, the kingdom could not have recovered from the state of depression, to which it was reduced by such a concurrence of unfavour- able circumstances. This assistance was given by this coimtry, partly in the shape of Loans, and partly in that of remittances made by the different Mining Companies for the prosecution of the works in which they are severally engaged. The amount of both was trifling in comparison with the capital withdrawn ; but it was sufficient to call into new life some of the natural resources of the country, and to give to the system that impulse, the effects of which I have traced in the preceding pages. That these effects should, in the short space of three years, be so considerable, is no mean proof both of the capabilities of the country, and of the advantages which it derives from its freedom from former trammels ; but they cannot be regarded as a fair criterion of what the commercial wants of Mexico will be, when improvement is no longer confined to the first, and most essential, elements of future prosperity, but extends, gradually, to the more important branches of its former agri- cultural industry. The mines, as yet, have made no returns ; and, although the capital employed in working them has produced the most beneficial effects upon those branches of Agriculture and Trade, with which they are more immediately connected, yet, it is to the produce of the mines, and not merely to the capital VOL. I. z