of the Supreme Tribunal,) for the Viceroy, Count Revillagigedo. I do not insert them here, both because I am unwilling to trespass unnecessarily upon the time of my readers, and because it will be more suitable to the purposes of the present inquiry to give, subsequently, a Table of those Mines, for which contracts have been entered into by British Companies, and to specify the States in which they are situated; that being now the only territorial division recognized in Mexico. It is, therefore, only necessary to repeat, what I have attempted to demonstrate in the first Section, namely, that the average annual produce of these thirty-seven Districts, during the fifteen years which preceded the Civil War, was Twenty-four millions of dollars.
The extraction of this enormous mass of Silver, was not, (as has been supposed in Europe,) the result of a simple process, in which the Mine owners and the Government were the only parties concerned, but rather the effect of a most complicated system, by which the Silver raised was made to pass through the hands of four or five immediate agents, before it was brought into circulation, or even paid the Duties to the Crown. Few of the old Miners were originally capitalists. Many were unable, at first, to obtain advances from those who were so, except to a very limited amount; and were thus compelled to carry on the works of their mines, by converting the first fruits into ready money, without waiting to ascertain the quantity of Silver which
