accumulated duties, and profits, together with the charges of a land carriage from the coast, by the most circuitous route, fell upon the unfortunate inhabitants of a portion of the country, which, under a more judicious system, might have seen all its wants supplied, through the ports of San Bernardo, (in Texas;) Refugio, (at the mouth of the Rio Bravo;) and Altamira, (all of which are within sixty leagues of some of the principal towns,) at a moderate price, and without there being a single natural difficulty to be overcome.
But any change in this respect, required (as stated by the Regency, in 1810, on the repeal of the first concessions in favour of a free trade,) a previous revision of the whole code of prohibitive laws; and this was a subject of too much delicacy for the monopolists of Cadiz, and Veracruz, to allow of any interference with it, which their money, or influence could avert.
As long as these lasted, all the ports to the North of Veracruz remained closed, and the inhabitants of the Frontier provinces of Mexico were compelled to lay in their whole stock of necessaries for the year, at the great fair of Saltillo. Even there, they laboured under peculiar disadvantages. So little of the money coined in the Capital found its way back to the North, that the farmers were often obliged to make their payments in kind, which was done at such a loss, that the whole produce of an estate was
