164 
On the Mines of Mexico. 
sessions. Our enterprizes, however, were ill-conducted, and 
many valuable lives were lost at Carthagena, and other unhealthy 
districts on the coast. Still our arms could hardly have failed 
of success, had not the progress of the French in Germany and 
the Netherlands rendered it indispensable to suspend distant ex- 
peditions, and employ our resources at home. 
In the war that began in 1756, and was so brilliantly con- 
ducted by Lord Chatham, Spain continued neutral until 1761, 
— after which there remained time for only one important expe- 
dition against her settlements, we mean that to the Havannah. 
Twelve years of peace ensued ; and the war which next burst 
forth on the American Continent (that of 1775) was of a nature 
to check the ardour of this country in regard to colonial posses- 
sions. Lastly, In the grand military contest excited by the 
French Revolution, Spain was for some years in alliance with 
this country ; and when, after 1796, her change of policy might 
have justified an attack on Mexico, the mortality among our 
troops in St Domingo, and, still more, the necessity of keeping 
our resources concentrated against France, prevented Ministers 
from giving effect to the tempting projects submitted to them 
by General Miranda, and other Spanish Americans. At last, 
in the year 1808, circumstances seemed to have become favour- 
able for such an attempt, when the insurrection of the inhabitants 
of Old Spain against the usurpation of Bonaparte, induced Go- 
vernment to consider every scheme for the employment of our 
forces as secondary to that of resistance to the French in the 
Peninsula. 
The colonists, however, had different views, and could not 
always be expected to remain in subservience to the mother- 
country. In 1810, they took up arms, and commenced those 
insurrections, which, varied in their success, and interrupted by 
frequent periods of pacification, have prevailed more or less 
during the last fourteen years. These were attended with in- 
calculable injury to the mining districts; buildings being over- 
turned, machinery destroyed, and the income of the proprietors 
reduced to a degree which, in a country thinly peopled, and 
bare of capital, could not for many years be recovered. Hence 
an accumulation of water in the mines, and an inability in the 
owners to defray the costs of the machinery and labour required 
