178 



MEXICO, CENTRAL AMEEICA, WEST INDIES. 



Fi'' 7ô. — The Woeld's Yield of Silver. 



time vast tracts have been surveyed and either sold or rented. But one-third of 

 these national lands has been gratuitously given to speculating land companies, 

 while a large part of the rest has been assigned to other financial societies or 

 to private persons in lots of 6,250 acres ; a single company thus owns no less 

 than 15,000,000 acres, while very little has been assigned to the peasantry. 



The bulk of the Mexican population is dependent on the great mining or land 

 companies. Of the two classes the miners are by far the more independent, owing 

 to the neighbourhood of the towns that have sprung up round about the works. 

 The peasants, poorly paid and kept by the very force of circumstances in the 

 power of the territorial lords, differ in name only from real serfs. Destitute of 



the necessary resources, they are 

 unable to borrow except from the 

 proprietor or his steward, and 

 these loans, consisting of pro- 

 duce or merchandise sold at ex- 

 orbitant rates, can be paid back 

 only by manual labour, contracted 

 for years in advance. From 'year 

 to year they see the prospect of 

 freedom fading away, and their 

 crushing liabilities are transmitted 

 from father to son. Doubtless all 

 Mexicans are free "by Act of 

 Parliament ; " no landowner has 

 any longer the right to reduce a 

 debtor to servitude, or sell him to 

 another owner, in discharge of 

 all or part of any real or fictitious 

 claim. The son is no longCT even 

 liable for his father's debts, nor 

 can the future of minors be 

 pledged for advances beforehand. 

 But in many districts remote from the capital, and especially in the south-eastern 

 provinces, the law is a dead letter, and the natives are even said to have been 

 secretly sold to Cuban planters. Practically servitude still exists, as during the 

 early days of the conquest, for it is the natural consequence of the landed system. 

 To be enslaved, to die a slave, in a land so fair, is the burden of every song round 

 the villages of Tabasco. The traveller, passing through the country, cannot fail to 

 be impressed by the plaintive tone of these songs, which float continually on the 

 air in the neighbourhood of all human habitations. 



At the beginning of the century the chief wealth of jMexico, apart from maize, 

 maguey and the other alimentary produce of primary necessity, consisted in the 

 precious metals ; the export trade was in fact confined almost exclusively to the 

 products of the mines. These produces represented an enormous value, withcut 



Mexico. 



Other Countries. 



