He even hopes an enlightened government will encourage (that is, protect) more useful industries.  This was written fifty years ago, though.  If an enlightened government will give people some security for life and property, and make reasonable laws, and execute them,—­leaving men of business to find out for themselves how it suits them to employ their capital, it seems probable that the balance between articles of real value and articles of imaginary value will adjust itself, perhaps better than an enlightened government could do it.  The Mexican government has, unfortunately, followed Humboldt’s advice in some respects.  Cotton goods, woollens, and hardware are thus protected.  We may sum up the statistics of the Mexican cotton-manufacture in a rough way thus,—­taking merely into question the coarse cotton cloth called manta, and used principally by the Indians.  We may reckon roughly that for this article alone the Mexicans have to pay a million sterling annually more than they could get it for if there were no protection-duty.  The only advantage anybody gets by this is that a certain part of the population is employed in a manufacture unsuited to the country, and is thus taken away from work that may be done profitably.  The actual amount of money paid in wages to the class of operatives thus forced into existence is much less than the amount which the country forfeits for the sake of making its manta at home.  Thus a sum actually amounting to a third of the annual taxation of the country is thrown away upon this one article; and more goes the same way, to encourage similar unprofitable manufactures.

With respect to the silver-mines, it is stated, on competent authority, that the northern States of Mexico are very rich in silver; but there is scarcely any population, and that consisting mostly of Red Indians who will not work.  When this district becomes a territory of the United States—­as seems almost certain, this silver will, no doubt, be worked.  We may make three periods in the history of Mexican silver-mining.  Before the Conquest, the Aztecs worked the silver-ore at Tasco and other places; and were very familiar with silver, though they did not value it much.  Under the Spaniards, the working of silver became the prominent industry of the country; and, until the Mexican Independence, the production steadily increased.  The Spaniards invented amalgamation by the patio-process, a most, important improvement.  Then came above twenty years of confusion, when little was done.  But when the Republic had fairly got under way, and the country was in some measure open to foreigners, Europe, especially England, in hot haste to take advantage of the opportunity, sent over engineers and machinery, and great sums of money, much of which was quite wasted, to the hopeless ruin of a great part of the adventurers.