The next serious attempt to deal with the colonization problem was made in the '70s by the eminent Secretary of Fomento, Vicente Riva Palacio. By this time it was realized that the government owed it to the public treasury to see that the public lands were not carelessly disposed of to companies that had no serious purpose to develop them or to promote immigration. It was recognized that lands that had been alienated could not be taken again without payment, but the government should ascertain what land it held and in the future dispose of it only in ways that would fully protect the rights of the nation. On August 25, 1877, the Secretary addressed to the governors of the states a circular that indicated both the problem confronting the administration and how ill fitted the government was to cope with it. Colonization legislation, it was shown, still proved a failure; colonization, however, was one of the greatest needs of the country,[1] but the government, unlike that of the republic to the north, had no way of telling where public land lay nor what was its extent.
The state governors were asked to outline the system adopted locally to handle immigrants on their arrival. They were asked to inform the central government what,
- ↑ President Diaz in his address to Congress declared immigration to be one of the "imperious necessities of the republic" Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1878, p. 526, quoting the address of President Diaz to Congress as printed in The Two Republics, September 29, 1877.
in later years are found in Memoria of D. Luis Robles, Minister of Fomento, 1865, and Memorial of D. Blas Balcaral, Minister of Fomento, 1868, published in Manero, op. cit., pp. 53-9.
