Page:Mexico (1829) Volumes 1 and 2.djvu/47

MEXICO. 17 turned. Immense coffee plantations have been made, during the last four years, in the vicinity of Cordova and Orizava ; cotton has been planted, to a considerable extent, by the American colonists in Texas ; and the re-establishment of crushing-mills for the cane, which now grows almost sponta- neously throughout V era Cruz, will be one of the first effects of the recovery of the country from that state of absolute stagnation, into which every thing has been thrown, during the last fifteen years, by the civil war. The prospect of so abundant a supply of many of those articles, which have, hitherto, been regarded as the luxuries of life, is interesting to Europe, and to Great Britain in par- ticular. There can be no doubt, that the opening of the American continent will have the effect of rendering almost universal the use of many things, which have long been con- fined to the privileged few ; while the more general consump- tion of these very articles in the Old World, will lead to a more general use of European manufactures in the New, among people, who have, hitherto, been excluded from the benefits of civilization. No better proof of this can be given, than the change which I have myself witnessed, in the course of three years, in the habits and appearance of the lower classes in Mexico. Before the Revolution, the streets of the capital were infested with a race of naked lazzaroni, whose numbers were supposed to amount to nearly twenty thousand, and who were, at once, the disgrace, and the bane, of all public places. This class has now almost totally disappeared ; clothing has become so common, that none appear without it. In the mining dis- tricts, a similar change has occurred; and as the resources of the country develope themselves, there is little doubt that it will gradually spread into the most remote provinces. Mexico cannot, during the present century, be a manu- facturing country, and, probably, will not attempt it. Her mines, and her agriculture, will enable her, with only common VOL. I. C