CAUSES OF NATIONAL ADVERSITY. 349 
so imprisoned, both by the nature of its territory, and its own mismanage- 
ment. 
I have thus spoken of some of the causes of Mexican adversity"; let 
me go further. It has heen a difficult thing to make the Mexicans believe 
that they possessed any other kind of wealth hut money or mines. It was 
difficult to make them understand that they were poor, in the midst of gold 
and silver, and that the wealthiest nations were England and Holland, 
the one without a precious niine in her soil, the other redeemed from the 
washes of the sea. 
In 1833, they were at the expense of $17,000,000 for their army, and 
in 1841, of $8,000,000, with only between seven and eight millions of 
people, and no foreign war ; and while they were furnishing from their mines 
the circulating medium of the world, they thought themselves exceedingly 
successful, if they could borrow money at an interest of fifty or even sixty 
per cent. 
Again, by the reduction of the export duty, on the precious metals, 
to three per cent., and the lax administration of the Custom Houses 
in the year from 1821 to 1822, $66,000,000 passed through the ports 
regularly to foreign nations — besides what was secretly taken from the 
country — which was thus depleted, in one twelvemonth, of a mass of wealth 
that would have assured it prosperity for years. The consequence was 
a paper money system, that soon lost its credit, and produced the most 
disastrous results. 
Again, they allowed no liberty of worship. They forbade foreigners 
to acquire real estate or freehold interests of any kind ; — they clogo-ed 
their naturalization laws with odious incumbrances to emigrants ; — they 
threw a thousand obstacles in the way of the marriage and even burial 
of foreigners; — and, as to the "protection" afforded by their tribunals, it 
was too notoriously infamous to be patiently spoken of. ^ 
Again, after severe losses by the export of the precious metals, a 
short-sighted policy was adopted by legislators in regard to commerce. 
With fair promises and plausible declarations, they professed a spirit of 
"free trade," while, at the same moment, there was no invention that 
ingenuity could devise, which they did not throw in the way of mer- 
chants. They commenced the prohibitory system. They imposed duties 
to the amount of double or triple the value of imports, allowing 
but short indulgence on the bonds ; and the result was, that there were 
no cash sales. This operated as a direct bounty in favor of contraband, 
not only^in the importation of merchandise, but in the export of silver ; at 
the same time that by these high duties the people were indirectly taxed 
to an exorbitant degree, and the nation was deprived of a large revenue, 
which she might have derived from moderate levies that would not have 
tempted to illicit trade. 
We are taught to regard this as an era of regeneration in the Govern- 
ment of Mexico. 
