tured to enter upon this part of the subject in their communications with me, (which some, from a very natural disinclination to commit themselves, did not,) and state, succinctly, in how far these opinions coincide with my own:—Upon the second point, I shall hazard a calculation myself, founded upon the general tenour of the information, which I have been labouring, during the last two years, to collect. I must, however, premise, that the data, upon which any such calculation must be founded, in the present state of Mexico, are too scanty to admit of the possibility of arriving at any exact result; while success, even where facts are not wanting to guide us in our investigations, and where every thing seems to indicate its probability, is always liable to be retarded by those causes, which I have pointed out in the preceding Section, as exercising a general influence upon the Mining Interests of New Spain, and, consequently, as more or less closely identified with the prospects of the present Adventurers.
No powers of machinery, for instance,—no exertions, or combinations of private ingenuity, could counterbalance the effects of several successive years of scarcity, or afford security amidst the desolation of a second Civil War.
The mines, at the same time that they are the great source of the prosperity of Mexico, are the first to feel any event by which that prosperity is menaced. Like the funds in Europe, they always indicate the approach of a storm; and require security,
