INDIANS AGRICULTURISTS MINERS MITA. 137 



the present day. We have noticed that a capitation tax was levied 

 on every Indian, and that it varied in different parts of Spanish 

 America, from four to fifteen dollars, according to the ability of the 

 Indians. They were likewise doomed to labor on the public 

 works, as well as to cultivate the soil for the general benefit of the 

 country, whilst by the imposition of the mita they were forced to 

 toil in the mines under a rigorous and debasing system which the 

 world believed altogether unequalled in mineral districts until the 

 British parliamentary reports of a few years past disclosed the fact, 

 that even in England, men and women are sometimes degraded into 

 beasts of burden in the mines whose galleries traverse in every 

 direction the bowels of that proud kingdom. 1 Toils and suffering 

 were the natural conditions of the poor Indian in America after the 

 conquest, and it might have been supposed that the plain dictates 

 of humanity would make the Spaniards content with the labor of 

 their serfs, without attempting afterwards, to rob them of the wages 

 of such ignominious labor. But even in this, the Spanish inge- 

 nuity and avarice were not to be foiled, for the corregidores in the 

 towns and villages, to whom were granted the minor monopolies 

 of almost all the necessaries of life, made this a pretext of obliging 

 the Indians to purchase what they required at the prices they chose 

 to affix to their goods. Monopoly — was the order of the day in 

 the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Its oppressions extended 

 through all ranks, and its grasping advantages were eagerly seized 

 by every magistrate from the alguazil to the viceroy. The people 

 groaned, but paid the burthensome exaction, whilst the relentless 

 officer, hardened by the contemplation of misery, and the constant 

 commission of legalized robbery, only became more watchful, sa- 

 gacious and grinding in proportion as he discovered how much the 

 down-trodden masses could bear. Benevolent viceroys and liberal 

 kings, frequently interposed to prevent the continuance of these un- 

 just acts, but they were unable to cope with the numerous officials 

 who performed all the minor ministerial duties throughout the colony. 

 These inferior agents, in a new and partially unorganized country, 

 had every advantage in their favor over the central authorities in the 

 capital. The poorer Spaniards and the Indian serfs had no means 

 of making their complaints heard in the palace. There was no 

 press or public opinion to give voice to the sorrows of the masses, 

 and personal fear often silenced the few who might have reached 

 the ear of merciful and just rulers. At court, the rich, powerful 



1 See British Parliamentary Report on the condition of the miners and mining 

 districts 



