594 " Mexico ;" and ( - Mexican Illustrations." 



sacred Virgin is the purest of the pure !" and, if he received a dollar, the man 

 with the crucifix took threepence ; if two, sixpence was deducted ; and so on. 

 Far from this tax creating any apparent dissatisfaction, all submitted to it 

 with the most praiseworthy humility ; and on one occasion only do I remem- 

 ber a man, who, by some means or other, had got drunk too soon^ asking why 

 a medio was taken away from him ? ' For the holy sacrament/ replied the 

 collector. ' I work hard for what I get, and will give what I like, but not 

 have any thing taken ; so where is my threepence ?' 'Oh, you sacrilegious 

 wretch!' roared the clerical officer ; ' you shall have to settle this with our 

 master and holy mother church.' 



The follies committed in the commencement of the different Mining 

 adventures, seem to have been outrageously extravagant : but scarcely 

 greater, as Mr. Ward fairly argues, than might be expected from men 

 who were wholly without data on the subject upon which they were 

 forming an opinion. In the commencement of the mining mania, all 

 that the British public knew of Mexico was derived from the " Essai 

 Politique" of Baron Humboldt. Even this book was but imperfectly 

 known, and still more imperfectly understood; and no allowance was 

 made for possible error on the part of the author ; or for the still more 

 important consideration that the book had been written fourteen years 

 before, and prior to a civil convulsion, during which the state of mining 

 property more, perhaps, than any other species of possession was likely 

 to have been changed. The first step was to believe every thing at one 

 gulp that M. Humboldt had seen. The next was to be convinced that 

 there must be a great deal more (gold, of course) that he had not seen. 

 Then, that the native Mexicans, who had worked these mines for some 

 centuries, should know any thing about mining, or about any thing, as 

 compared with the English, was impossible. And lastly, the coolest 

 speculators assumed that whatever new inventions might, on consider- 

 ation, arise, or be deemed requisite, what we had the knowledge was 

 secure : the processes and machinery which succeeded in England, 

 must, of course, succeed in South America. 



These pleasing beliefs, all destined even the last of them to be 

 thrown over in the sequel, led to results which are too notorious for it to 

 be necessary that we should dwell upon them. Gentlemen were sent out 

 in pursuit of mines, and mining adventures, whose knowledge of mining 

 had remained a secret, we verily believe, to themselves certainly to all 

 the world beside up to the moment when considerable salaries and 

 handsome " outfits" called it into action. Crowds of working miners 

 were sent from Cornwall over whom, it might have been recollected, it 

 would be impossible abroad to exercise any thing like control; and who, in 

 fact (emancipated from the control to which they were accustomed the 

 fear of the loss of their employ), became rapidly so demoralized and 

 unmanageable as to produce mischief instead of benefit wherever they 

 went : besides that, being taken out of the particular duty to which they 

 had been habituated (and in which, no doubt, they were eminently 

 skilful), it was found that the native miners did the work three times 

 better. Mr. Ward says : 



<e Englishmen of the lower orders appear to undergo a change, on leaving 

 their own country (particularly if exposed to the contagion of a large town), 

 which renders them the most inefficient of human beings : nor is it by an 

 excess of liberality, which only raises them above the sphere in which they 

 were fitted to act, that this evil can be remedied. Indolence, obstinacy, and 



