able trait in the Revolution of America, is the sort of proscription which the name of Spaniard now entails upon those, who formerly found it the only passport to preferment: but the violence of the reaction, is, perhaps, the best proof of the excess of the evils by which it was occasioned.
There can be little doubt, that the Spanish Government fomented this mutual antipathy between the two most influential classes of its subjects, on the same principle that led it to encourage all the distinctions of caste, and colour, which I have mentioned in the second section of this book. This was not the case, however, with the other abuses which I have had occasion to enumerate: wherever her financial interests were at stake, the Mother country was remarkably vigilant, but then she, but too frequently, took a wrong mode of effecting what she had in view. Instead of attempting a reform, by introducing into the general system something like simplicity, and uniformity of plan, every succeeding year rendered the machinery still more complicated. Whenever abuses were discovered in any office, a new office was established, as the only means of correcting them; thus, wheel within wheel was added, and check upon check introduced, until the action of the whole was impeded, and the confusion became so great, that nothing could remedy it. Mexico, the most important of all the Colonies, only remitted six millions of dollars annually to the Peninsula: the remainder of a revenue of twenty
