Page:Mexico (1829) Volumes 1 and 2.djvu/417

MEXICO. From this amount must be deducted 27,770,77^ dollars for the registered exports of Agricultural produce during the fifteen years under consideration ; but this still leaves a ba- lance against Mexico ; the registered Imports being (with all deductions made) 105,557,469 dollars, and the registered Ex- ports 94,462,427 dollars. The difference (11,095,042 dol- lars) must have been covered by the illicit extraction of gold and silver to that amount ; there being no article of Agri- cultural produce, with the exception of Cochineal, sufficiently valuable to hold out a similar inducement for contraband trade. The registered shipments of Cochineal by Old Spa- niards, who took this mode of making remittances to Europe, amounted in five years, (from 1821 to 1825.) to 7,451,992 dollars ; and as this bears a fair proportion to the produce, (Vide Book I. Sect. III.) it is not to be presumed that the illicit extraction can have been very great. My object in thus comparing the Exports of specie with the Imports of European manufactures, (which may appear, at first, to have no immediate connexion with the question now under consideration,) is, to show that no part of the Spanish property withdrawn from the country since the com- mencement of the Revolution, can be comprehended in the registered exportation from Veracruz, since the total amount of the Exports does not cover the total amount of the regis- tered Imports, but leaves a balance of 11,095,042 dollars, to be paid by some other channel. In the other ports it will be impossible for me to attempt a similar comparison, as I have not been able to obtain re- turns of Imports of any kind. I must, therefore, confine my- self to a statement of the amount of the entries of the pre- cious metals shipped in each port ; and even these are but little to be depended upon, as the gentleman, to whom I am indebted for the extracts from the Registers of San Bias and Mazatlan, informed me that, in the opinion of the oldest merchants upon the Western coast, the registered exports did