Page:Mexico (1829) Volumes 1 and 2.djvu/489

MEXICO. 449 which, consequently, they are not less interested than the foreign Adventurers themselves, in affording protection. The same observation holds good with regard to an in- crease of duties on the part of the Government, (of which I have heard great fears expressed here,) as soon as the mines begin to become productive anew. Upon this subject it is impossible to give the Adventurers any other security than that which they may derive from the reflection, that this increase of duties must weigh as heavily upon the Mexican proprietors, as upon themselves. The mines are private, not public, property ; and the produce, (according to the terms of the contracts,) after the repayment of the capital invested by the Companies in the first instance, is to be divided equally between the Adventurers and the Mexican proprietors. In order to favour the attempt to work the mines anew by the assistance of foreign capitals, the duties formerly paid on the silver raised, (seventeen per cent.) were reduced to about five and a half. There was no pledge that, when the capitals were repaid, some increase would not be made in the duties : but there is also no reason to suppose that they will ever again be raised to their former standard, because the inter- ests, not of the foreign capitalists, but of the very influential class of Mexican proprietors, require that they should not be so. The amount of duties was formerly fixed by the Mother- country. It now depends, not even upon the Executive of Mexico, but upon an assembly of native Mexicans, amongst whom the great Mining Districts are sure to be adequately represented. It is, therefore, hardly natural to suppose that they will give their sanction to a measure by which they themselves will be the first to suffer ; nor can they, in any way, in a country which pays for all its imports in bullion, impose a duty upon the silver raised in such a manner as to bear upon Foreigners, without affecting themselves. I leave good faith entirely out of the question in this view of the case, because, though always appealed to, it is, I fear, of but VOL. I. 2 G