NATIONAL DEBT. 321 
pressing wants of the Government to their importunities. He was, in fact, 
forced to the measure. The national credit was irremediably impaired, 
and he found it impossible to obtain loans. The consequence was, the 
seizure of the customs by the suspension of their prior appropriation until 
he was enabled to relieve his Treasury. 
Independently of the English and the American debt, the claims upon 
the Mexican Government have usually been created by means of loans 
of the most usurious character. In order to illustrate this system, and to 
show the enormous rates at which lenders endeavored to assure themselves 
against loss by depreciation, I will recount some transactions which were 
partly effected in 1841. 
On the 20th of September, fifteen days before' the treaty of Estansuela, 
the administration of President Bustamante offered the following terms for 
a loan of $1,200,000. It proposed to receive the sum of $200,000 in cash, 
and $1,000,000 represented in the paper or credits of the Government. 
These credits or paper were worth, in the market, nine per cent. About 
one-half of the loan was taken, and the parties obtained ordei's on the seve- 
ral maritime Custom Houses, receivable in payment of duties. 
The revenues of the Custom House, of Matamoras, have been always 
hitherto appropriated to pay the army, on the northern frontier of the Re- 
public. During the administration of General Bustamante, the command- 
ant of Matamoras issued bonds or drafts against that Custom House for 
$150,000, receivable for all kinds of duties as cash. He disposed of these 
bonds to the merchants of that port for $100,000 — and, in addition to the 
lonus of $50,000, allowed them interest on the $100,000, at the rate of 
three per cent, per month, until they had duties to pay which they could 
extinguish by the drafts. 
Another transaction, of a singular nature, developes the character of the 
Government's negotiations, and can only be accounted for by the receipt of 
some advantages which the act itself does not disclose to the public. 
The mint at Guanajuato, or the right to coin at that place, was con- 
tracted for, in 1842, by a most respectable foreign house in Mexico, for 
$71,000 easily for the term o^ fourteen years, at the same time that another 
offer was before the Government, stipulating for the payment of $400,000 
for the same period, payable in annual instalments of $25,000 each. The 
$71,000 in hand, were, however, deemed of more value than the pros- 
pective four hundred thousand ! This mint leaves a nett annual income 
of $60,000 ! 
With such a spendthrift abandonment of the resources of the country, 
continued, for a series of years, in the midst of the pressure of foreign 
claims and domestic warfare, it is, indeed, wonderful that Mexico has so 
long survived the ruin which must inevitably overtake her with a debt of 
$84,000,000, and an annual expenditure (as will be seen from the suc- 
21 
