the present day. We have noticed that a capitation tax was levied on every Indian, and that it varied in different parts of Spanish America, from four to fifteen dollars, according to the ability of the Indians. They were likewise doomed to labor on the public works, as well as to cultivate the soil for the general benefit of the country, whilst by the imposition of the mita they were forced to toil in the mines under a rigorous and debasing system which the world believed altogether unequalled in mineral districts until the British parliamentary reports of a few years past disclosed the fact, that even in England, men and women are sometimes degraded into beasts of burden in the mines whose galleries traverse in every direction the bowels of that proud kingdom.[1] Toils and suffering were the natural conditions of the poor Indian in America after the conquest, and it might have been supposed that the plain dictates of humanity would make the Spaniards content with the labor of their serfs, without attempting afterwards, to rob them of the wages of such ignominious labor. But even in this, the Spanish ingenuity and avarice were not to be foiled, for the corregidores in the towns and villages, to whom were granted the minor monopolies of almost all the necessaries of life, made this a pretext of obliging the Indians to purchase what they required at the prices they chose to affix to their goods. Monopoly—was the order of the day in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Its oppressions extended through all ranks, and its grasping advantages were eagerly seized by every magistrate from the alguazil to the viceroy. The people groaned, but paid the burthensome exaction, whilst the relentless officer, hardened by the contemplation of misery, and the constant commission of legalized robbery, only became more watchful, sagacious and grinding in proportion as he discovered how much the down-trodden masses could bear. Benevolent viceroys and liberal kings, frequently interposed to prevent the continuance of these unjust acts, but they were unable to cope with the numerous officials who performed all the minor ministerial duties throughout the colony. These inferior agents, in a new and partially unorganized country, had every advantage in their favor over the central authorities in the capital. The poorer Spaniards and the Indian serfs had no means of making their complaints heard in the palace. There was no press or public opinion to give voice to the sorrows of the masses, and personal fear often silenced the few who might have reached the ear of merciful and just rulers. At court, the rich, powerful
- ↑ See British Parliamentary Report on the condition of the miners and mining districts
