the vexations to which the peon was exposed from the lesser Spanish and Indian magistracy were greatly diminished. A previous regulation in their favour had given them magistrates of their own choice; but it was found necessary to appoint over these a corregidor, to prevent the Indian alcaldes from abusing their authority. The Indians were exempted from every sort of indirect impost; they paid no taxes, and the law allowed them full liberty in the sale of their productions. The impost of the tributos, which was a direct capitation tax, paid by all male Indians between the ages of 10 and 50, had also been considerably reduced in several of the intendencies. Besides this, they were liable only to the payment of parochial dues and offerings. Such was the state of things prior to the first Revolution.
But while the Legislature appeared thus to favour the Indians with regards to imposts, it deprived them of the most important civil rights, and, affecting to treat them as perpetual minors, declared null and void every act signed by a native, and every obligation which he might contract beyond the value of 15 francs. It is possible that the intention of the Legislature was to protect them against being held in bondage on the plea of debt by those who had constituted themselves their creditors for this purpose, but the effect was to render thousands incapable of entering into any binding contract, and to place an insurmountable barrier between the Indians and other castes.
"In fact," says the Bishop of Michoacan, in a memoir presented to the Spanish monarch in 1799, "he Indians and the races of mixed blood are in a state of extreme humiliation. The colour peculiar to the Indians, their ignorance, and especially their poverty, remove them to an infinite distance from the whites. The privileges which the laws seem to concede to the Indians are of small advantage to them; perhaps they are rather hurtful. Shut up within the narrow boundaries (the radius of which is only 542 yards) assigned by an ancient law to the Indian villages, the natives
