292 A TRIP TO MEXICO. 



In the first place, no European settlers ever went to Mexico 

 with the intention of making a permanent home and living 

 there. Spaniard, German, French and English, all went there to 

 make a fortune and then return to Europe to enjoy it. For. three 

 hundred years the country was ruled by Viceroys from Spain, 

 who succeeded each other on an average every four years, that 

 time being considered long enough for each to reap an ill-gotten 

 harvest and to get back to his home land again. Thus from the 

 very outset this ill-fated country has been reaped and raked and 

 gleaned to make the wealth and fortunes of foreigners. What 

 was left by grasping tradesmen and rapacious rulers, was gathered 

 up by swarms of priests, and either sent back to the order at 

 home in payment for their appointment, or expended in the erec- 

 tion and costly adornment of myriads of monasteries and cathe- 

 drals. But these add nothing to the wealth of nations, and the 

 gains that go abroad make no home improvements. Thus it has 

 come that a soil once rich and fertile, that easily sustained the 

 swarming workers of ancient times, is now waste, without pre- 

 tense of cultivation on three-fourths of it. The richest mineral 

 veins and surface leads have been worked and wasted out, till 

 how, under crude and slovenly processes of refining, the silver 

 mines do not pay expenses. 



The native Indians, who have had among them in times past 

 some men of remarkable sense and judgment, saw this desolation 

 coming upon their country, over half a century ago. They 

 attributed it to the rule of the Spaniards ; and in 1821 they suc- 

 ceeded, as we had done, after a long and trying struggle, in 

 throwing off the foreign yoke. But prosperity did not come. 

 It was not sought from the only source whence it can come from 

 mother Earth. Within three or four years after their indepen- 

 dence, they had borrowed in London about forty million dollars. 

 This kept them afloat some twelve years, when the mania for 

 mining speculations broke out in England. Again the infatuated 

 English invested perhaps another forty millions in Mexican silver 

 mines, the money from which investments kept things moving 

 there till our southern aristocracy wanted more slave territory, 

 and we had to go over and fight Mexico for it. This caused us 



