78 MINES: — WROUGHT BY AZTECS. 



which it seems impossible to ameliorate, and yet whose wants or 

 luxuries do not afford them support. It is hard to suffer hunger 

 and to see our dependants die of starvation, when we are both able 

 and willing to work for wages but can obtain no work upon which 

 to exercise our ingenuity or our hands. It is frightful to reflect, 

 says Mr. Carlyle, in one of his admirable essays, that there is 

 hardly an English horse, in a condition to labor for his owner, that 

 is deprived of food and lodging, whilst thousands of human beings 

 rise daily from their obscure and comfortless dens in the British 

 isles, who do not know how they shall obtain employment for the 

 day by which they may purchase a meal. 



To this dismal account of European suffering, the condition of 

 the American continent affords the best reply. The answer and 

 the remedy are both displayed in the social and political institu- 

 tions, as well as in the boundless unoccupied and prolific tracts of 

 our country. Labor cries out for work and recompense from the 

 Old World, whilst the New displays her soil, her mines, her com- 

 merce and her trades, as the best alms that one nation can bestow 

 on another, because they come direct from God and are the reward 

 of meritorious industry. Before such a tribunal the modern dema- 

 gogue of continental Europe shrinks into insignificance, and the 

 laws of labor are effectually vindicated. 



The Mines of Mexico have been wrought from the earliest 

 periods. Long , before the advent of the Spaniards, the natives of 

 Mexico, like those of Peru, were acquainted with the use of metals. 

 Nor were they contented with such specimens as they found scat- 

 tered at random on the surface of the earth or in the ravines of 

 mounlain torrents, but had already learned to dig shafts, pierce 

 galleries, form needful implements, and trace the metallic veins in 

 the hearts of mountains. We know that they possessed gold, sil- 

 ver, lead, tin, copper and cinnabar. Beautiful samples of jewelry 

 were wrought by them, and gold and silver vases, constructed in 

 Mexico, were sent to Spain by the conquerors, as testimonials of 

 the mineral wealth of the country. The dependant tribes paid 

 their tributes to the sovereign in a species of metallic currency, 

 which though not stamped by royal order, was yet the representa- 

 tive of a standard value. The exact position of all the mines from 

 which these treasures were derived by the Aztecs is not certainly 

 known at the present day, but as the natives were often compelled 

 to indicate some of the sources of their riches to the conquerors 

 there is little doubt that the present mineral district of the republic 

 is that from which they procured their chief supplies. 



