/IDining, 27 



The cost of making up a mining title is from $10 to $12. Titles, 

 when once granted, unless fraud is shown, are irrevocable so long as the 

 taxes are paid, which are ten dollars per year on each " pertenencia," 

 and no work or manual labor is necessary to hold the same. The taxes 

 may be paid quarterly or annually, at the discretion of the holder, to 

 the mining agent of the district in which the property is denounced, 

 or by special arrangement they may be paid at the office of the Fed- 

 eral Treasury in the City of Mexico. After the title is granted, it 

 must be registered in the district where the denouncement is made, 

 and also entered upon the books of the stamp office, for which no fees 

 are charged. 



MINTS AND DUTIES ON SILVER. 



Under the Spanish laws all silver paid a duty ; and as most of it 

 was coined, that duty was levied on coinage, and the exportation of 

 bullion was prohibited ; but of course a great deal was smuggled, both 

 during the Spanish rule and still more when Mexico was opened to 

 foreign trade after our Independence. When I occupied for the first 

 time the Treasury Department of Mexico in 1868, it seemed to me an 

 outrage against the mining industry of the country to require the 

 miners especially those who were far removed from the mints to 

 take their bullion from the mints, at a heavy expense and risk, coin it 

 there and take it back to the mines, and from there to the ports to be 

 exported to London, where it was often again turned into bullion ; and 

 as the contracts made with the lessees of the mints did not allow the 

 free exportation of bullion, I proposed and succeeded in having en- 

 acted a law for the purpose of allowing bullion to be exported, pro- 

 vided that it paid the coinage duty at the respective custom-houses for 

 the benefit of the mint's lessees ; and this condition of things, extra- 

 ordinary as it may seem, was a great relief to the silver producers, and 

 continued until the Mexican Government could recover all the mints 

 and be free to legislate on the subject, which it was able to do par- 

 tially during my last incumbency of the Treasury Department ; they 

 all since having been recovered. 



We had thirteen mints in the country to coin the silver extracted 

 from our mines, which, in the precarious condition of the Mexican 

 Treasury, were sometimes rented to private parties who advanced a 

 sum that seemed large at that time, although it was a trifle in compari- 

 son to their profits, as they collected a duty of nearly 4^ per cent, 

 upon the amount of bullion coined, and they credited to the Govern- 

 ment only i-J per cent, of the same, the laws requiring that only coined 

 silver could be exported. But now that silver can be transported easily 

 from the mine to the mint, since a railway system has been built, the 

 mints have been reduced to four, one in the City of Mexico, which 



