Page:Mexico in 1827 Vol 2.djvu/675

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MEXICO IN 1827.
655

and the mineral riches in its vicinity are seldom explored.

In the Tierra Caliente, between Guadalajara and Tepic, there are likewise some "minerales" hitherto but little worked. Of these, the only one of importance appears to be Tlōstŏtīpăqūillo, where the mines of Colonel Jose Chiafino appear by papers, with which Mr. Ritchie was so good as to furnish me, to have yielded from 1806 to 1810 a clear profit of 234,932 dollars, and from 1820 to 1824, 268,143 dollars. They are now abandoned, in consequence of the death of the proprietor.

Jalisco is undoubtedly the State in which Republican ideas have made the greatest progress, but I doubt whether the violence of the attacks directed against every thing connected with the former system has not produced in some respects a detrimental effect. The liberty of the press has degenerated into licentiousness; and the wish to weaken the influence of the clergy, (all powerful in a city so long the seat of a wealthy Bishoprick,) led the late Governor into a contest, in which he appeared at last as the avowed advocate of atheism.

As in Durango, the intervention of the Supreme Government was found necessary, in order to prevent the too great eagerness with which ecclesiastical reforms were pushed by the liberal party, from being productive of very serious consequences. By the seventh Article of the Constitution of Jalisco, the