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MEXICO — PROGRESSIVE
houses, where hitherto nearly every thing paid high duty:—
Barbed wire for fencing, hoes, bars for mines, fire-engines, hydraulic lime, printed books, all sorts of machinery, powder for mines, printing type, rags for paper, wire rope and cable, church clocks, and many useful chemicals.
Even the cockpit has paid a portion of the national revenue; and to the smiling cynic who may think too little of the politicians who condescend to this lowly and vicious source of moneymaking for national necessities, the reminder may be opportune, that to make the brutal who indulge in such sport pay for their pastime[1] is more tolerable to civilization than some methods of the governments of the Old World. Mexico raises revenue also by lotteries. The most pious of governments raised money in the same way
- ↑ I smile to recall that we were invited to occupy front seats, as a mark of honor, upon a certain Sunday evening, to witness this cruel and shocking spectacle. We were too timid or too super-refined to go. But when I read the other day the story of the evictions of Bodyke, Ire., where bedridden old women and half-naked children were thrown out into ditches; the roofs that sheltered them—in many cases built by their kindred—torn down, lest they should reclaim their own; and all this to extort by terror from others rents land and labor combined could not pay if the labor lived, the lottery, the bull-fight, and the cockpit, as means of making money, became civilized by comparison.
