the government expenses in New Spain, and remissions to the colonies and the mother country, there barely remained $2,000,000 in the treasury, while the public debt amounted to $29,929,695.[1] With regard to the shipments of treasure from New Spain to the royal treasury and the colonies on account of the king, the drain upon the country is prominently set forth by the fact that, during the period from 1690 to 1807 inclusive, $1,052,579,000 of coined gold and silver were shipped, $767,000,000 of which found its way into the royal treasury of Spain.[2]
The bases which have been used in the preceding chapter have naturally been derived from volumes which contain royal ordinances and official documents on a great variety of subjects. Among such works are included the Recop. de Ind.; Reales Ordenes; Reales Cédulas; Ordenes de la Corona; Montemayor, Sumario, and a number of others containing laws and regulations for the administration of the treasury; laws which occasionally remitted some impost for the benefit of the Indians or even the colonists generally, but yet continually imposed fresh taxes and duties as time passed on. But in addition to such authorities a large number of others have been consulted. Prominent among these is the Biblioteca de Legislacion Ultramarina, of José María Zamora y Coronada, published in 1844-6. This work contains, besides royal cédulas and regulations bearing upon every branch of the government, a large collection of acts of the audiencia, proclamations, and orders issued from the year 1680. A clear conception of the wide difference between the old and new commercial systems is obtained from a comparison of the different tariffs of the custom-house which prevailed during the two epochs. Vetancurt in his Tratado de la Ciudad de Mexico treats casually and briefly of several branches of the revenue, such as the introduction of the alcabala, p. 10; demand upon the Indians for a loan, p. 1 1; the constitution of the tribunals of the exchequer, p. 28; the founding of the mint, and other matters connected with finance in early days. Villa-Señor gives a more extended account of these matters in Theatro Americano, i. 38-50, yet it is but a sketch of the numerous ramifications of the revenue office. Alaman, in his Disert., and Hist. Mex., gives some reliable and valuable information relative to both the revenue and the mint, but it is neither copious nor connected.
An extremely valuable work on this subject is the Historia General de Real Hacienda, compiled by Fabian de Fonseca and Cárlos de Urrutia, by order of the viceroy Conde de Revilla Gigedo. The six printed volumes which compose the work cost great research, and the authors, having had access to all necessary public documents, have produced as complete and accurate a history of the real hacienda and statistics connected with the gov-
