POLITICAL ECONOMY. 



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league and a half in extent, commonly terminating in rivers, 

 the obstreperous course of which is scarcely to be perceived 

 from the elevated station where the path is opened. The 

 traveller, w^hen, for the first time, he has to cross one of these 

 tottering bridges, cannot shun the refie6tion, that it would be 

 still safer to attempt the navigation of Cape Horn. Those 

 who have frequented the roads of Huanuco and Cuzco, will 

 most assuredly assent to this truth. 



To lessen these risks and terrors, to improve the roads of 

 the above description, and to open others of a safer and more 

 commodious nature, various projects, more or less extensive 

 and costly, according to the particular views of their authors, 

 have at different times been formed. Not one, however, has 

 as yet been devised, in which the facility of the execution has 

 been combined with the permanence oi the necessary works, 

 and the resources made to accord wdth economy and humanity. 

 The fundamental principles of almost all the proje6tors who 

 have hazarded their conje6lures on this head, have consisted of 

 the forced mita^ or service of the Indians, and the augmenta- 

 tion of the duties on certain merchandizes. This mode of 

 viewing things is similar to that which cost the life of the un- 

 fortunate Abdoul-Hassan-Benamar, the minister of Muley- 

 Mehemed, king of Morocco. It is related of this courtier, 

 that having been called on by his sovereign, to propose some 

 tolerable mode of filling the royal coffers, he replied, after 

 having meditated the subje6l for six weeks, that he had fallen 

 on a simple, natural, and mild expedient, to give the state 

 an annual revenue of three millions of piastres. For this pur- 

 pose, nothing more, he observed, was required, than to levy 

 a new tax of two piastres on each of the subje6ts, whether 



male 



