374 MEXICO. duce of the country, during the fifteen years ending in 1825, higher, by nearly one million of dollars, than the Mint re- turns ; and to suppose that, even during the worst of times, the value of the precious metals raised, annually, from the Mines of Mexico, cannot have averaged less than eleven mil- lions of dollars. The immense amount of the exports on private account ; and the necessity of balancing, with the produce of the Mines, nearly the whole of the imports of Foreign manufactures, (a part of which was covered before the Revolution, by the Agricultural produce,) will explain the fact of the country having been reduced to a state of extreme penury, in the midst of this apparent wealth ; the Minimum of the produce of Mexico being nearly double the Maximum of the average produce of any of the other Colonies of Spain, before the Re- volution.* It now remains for me to trace the effects of the Civil War vipon the circulating medium of the country, by compar- ing, in as far as such a comparison is possible, the amount of the exports of specie, during the last fifteen years, with that of the produce, in conjunction with the specie, which may be supposed to have accumulated, during the fifteen years of prosperity, by which the Revolution was preceded. The whole circulating medium of Mexico was estimated by Humboldt, in 1803, at fifty-five, or sixty millions of dollars.-f*
- The average produce of Peru, as given by Humboldt, Dollars,
in 1803, was, . • • '• ,• - 5,317,988 Buenos Ayres ...... 4,212,404 New Grenada ...... 2,624,760 Essai Politique, Livre IV. Chap. XI. t I am induced to adopt Humboldt's estimate of the amount of the circulating medium of Mexico in 1803, not because I conceive it to have been correct, but because, in a calculation, where so much must necessa- rily be left to conjectural evidence, I wish to have something more than a mere supposition of my own to serve as a basis. Sixty millions are thought by most people to be very much under the real amount.
