236 .Mexican Mines. 



del Monte, or in those of Bolanos, where M. Sonneschmidt 

 counted nearly 4000 horses and mules employed in moving 

 the whims." 



The benefits described as being conferred on the mining 

 districts by putting their industry in motion were thus justly 

 anticipated in the Report to Congress of Don Lucas Alaman, 

 minister for foreign affairs, dated Nov. 1st, 1823. 



" It is a principle admitted by all wi'iters on political oeco- 

 nomy, that the most direct encouragement that can be given 

 to agriculture and to industry, is to facilitate the consumption 

 of the produce of the one, and the sale of the manufactures of 

 the other. If the mines be considered amongst us under this 

 point of view, it will be found that nothing contributes so much 

 as they do to the prosperity of those essential branches of the 

 public riches. The great number of people that are occupied 

 in them, the animals that are employed in the working of the 

 machinery and in transporting the oi'es, the consumption that 

 arises therefrom of grain, as well as of soap, paper, iron, &c., 

 give a powerful impulse to agriculture, the arts, and to com- 

 merce. If practical illustration be necessary to prove those 

 facts, which are doubted only by men whose minds are pre- 

 occupied by the pai'adoxical assertions of systematic oecono- 

 mists, they may be found on a comparison of the state of our 

 mining provinces, such as Guanaxuato and Zacatecas, pre- 

 vious to the year 1810 and at the present period. Abundance 

 and prosperity then reigned throughout both of them. The 

 agriculturist found in those famous reales (districts) a ready 

 and certain market for his produce ; the smith, the carpenter, 

 the mason, a constant employment for his industry ; the mer- 

 chant, an extensive consumption for the goods which he intro- 

 duced ; and the treasures drawn from the bowels of the earth 

 wei'e distributed throughout and revivified the most distant 

 provinces in payment for the soap, wood, salt, magistral, horses 

 and mules, that were brought from all parts. The nature of 

 our ores is also a powerful cause of these happy results : they 

 are generally poor in metal, aud most abundant in quantity, 

 and require for their manufacture a great quantity of machinery 

 and ingredients ; and it may therefore be said, that the miner 

 merely draws forth funds to distribute them freely among the 

 labourers, merchants, and artisans; and we must naturally 

 conclude that the prosperity of these classes depends prin- 

 cipally upon the impulse given to them by the mines, which 

 in our notion are thus the acting principle of all the other 

 branches of industiy." 



* Selections, &c. p. 2/4—280. f Ibid. Intiod. p. xxx. xxxi. 



AFKICA. 



