Page:Mexico (1829) Volumes 1 and 2.djvu/439

M EX ICO. 399 themselves. In others, water was allowed to accumulate, in consequence of the suspension of the usual labours ; while in all, the merchants, who had before supplied funds for carrying on the different operations, withdrew their capitals, as soon as the intercourse between the seat of Government and the Pro- vinces was interrupted. In the years 1811 and 1812, the Agricultural produce of the country likewise decreased so rapidly, that it became difficult to procure the means of sub- sistence. The Mining towns were surrounded by Insurgent parties, which occupied the whole of the open country, and rendered it impossible either to receive supplies, or to make remittances, without the protection of a large escort ; while the exactions of the officers, by whom these escorts were comr- manded, (exactions, which were reduced to a system, and in which the Viceroy himself largely participated,) doubled the price of quicksilver, and every other article consumed in the mines ; and thus reduced the value of silver to the miner so much, that the marc did not repay the cost of extraction, even with the richest ores. The poor ores were allowed to accumulate untouched. This was the real evil of the Revolution. It was not the destruction of the materiel of the mines, however severe the loss, that could have prevented them from recovering the shock, as soon as the first fury of the Civil War had subsided ; but the want of confidence, and the constant risk incurred by the possession of a capital, which, from its being in so very tangible a shape, was peculiarly an object of attraction to all parties, — led to the gradual dissolution of a system, which it had required three centuries to bring to the state of perfec- tion in which it existed at the commencement of the war of Independence. I do not believe that I am guilty of any ex- aggeration in stating, that there never was a greater spirit of enterprise, more liberality, or, in general, better faith, dis- played in any part of the world, than anjongst the Miners of Mexico before the year 1810. Unexampled prosperity was