REVILLA-GIGEDo's COLONIAL IMPROVEMENTS. 



The poor as well as the rich received his paternal notice. He 

 enquired into .their wants and studied their interests. One of his 

 most beneficent schemes was the erection of a Monte Pio, for their 

 relief, yet the sum he destined for this object was withheld by the 

 court and used for the payment of royal debts. Agriculture, hor- 

 ticulture and botany were especially fostered by this enlightened 

 nobleman. He carried out the project of his predecessor by 

 founding the botanical garden, and liberally rewarded and encour- 

 aged the pupils of this establishment, for he deemed the rich 

 vegetable resources of Mexico quite as worthy of national attention 

 as the mines which had hitherto absorbed the public interest. 

 Literature, too, did not escape his fostering care, as far as the 

 jealous rules of the Inquisition and of royal policy permitted its 

 liberal encouragement by a viceroy. He found the streets of the 

 capital and its suburbs badly paved and kept, and he rigidly 

 enforced all the police regulations which were necessary for their 

 purity and safety. As he knew that one of the best means of 

 developing and binding together the provinces of the empire, was 

 the construction of substantial and secure roads, — he proposed that 

 the highways to Vera Cruz, Acapulco, Meztitlan de la Sierra, and 

 Toluca, should be reconstructed in the most enduring manner. 

 But the Junta Superior de Hacienda opposed the measure, and the 

 count was obliged to expend, from his own purse, the requisite 

 sums for the most important repairs. He established weekly posts 

 between the capitals of the Intendencies ; — regulated and restrict- 

 ed the cutting of timber in the adjacent mountains; — established 

 a professorship of anatomy in the Hospital de Naturales ; destroyed 

 the provincial militia system and formed regular corps out of the 

 best veterans found in the ranks. Knowing the difficulty with 

 which the poor or uninfluential reached the ear of their Mexican 

 governors, he placed a locked case in one of the halls of his palace 

 into which all persons were at liberty to throw their memorials 

 designed for the viceroy's scrutiny. It was, in reality, a secret 

 mode of espionage, but it brought to the count's knowledge many 

 an important fact which he would never have learned through the 

 ordinary channels of the court. Without this secret chest, whose 

 key was never out of his possession, Revilla-Gigedo, with all his 

 personal industry, might never have comprehended the actual con- 

 dition of Mexico, or, have adopted the numerous measures for its 

 improvement which distinguished his reign. 



Besides this provident measure for the internal safety and pro- 

 gressive comfort of New Spain, the count directed his attention to 



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