the scheme, though actually decreed, proved a failure, and the famous laws of January 11 and February 4, 1847, were no more successful. June 17, 1847, a special tax of one million was assessed upon the entire population; but only a small fraction of this appears to have been paid. In November, 1847, the government offered to deduct one half of the pending national: taxes levied before May 1, 1846, if citizens would pay them by February 1, 1848; and this indicates clearly how the people had been acting. A few of the states, besides maintaining National Guards, erecting fortifications and manufacturing cannon, remitted some cash to the central government; but when we find the richest of them all, México, boasting that she had sent the insignificant sum of about $160,000, we have reason to place a rather slight value upon this kind of assistance. Moreover, accepted drafts on that state, payable in one, two and three months, could not be sold — even at a discount.[1]
The clergy gave nominally a million and a half, but they. appear to have taken up indirectly, at a discount of forty per cent, the drafts of which this donation consisted. Citizens provided a large part of the new ordnance, but aside from this we hear of few substantial gifts. Just after the battle of Molino del Rey, in order to obtain bread for the army, the government requested the bakers of the capital to meet, but only a part of them came. A "positive supreme order" then brought them together, and they promised contributions; yet the promises were not kept.[2]
Every possible effort was made to borrow. Once the treasury offered a national loan of two and a half millions, but it fell flat in the states that might have paid the most. Just before the battle of Cerro Gordo there was a door-to-door canvass at Mexico; but only small sums can have been picked up. About three months later the government imposed a forced loan, of which more than $280,000 were assigned to the capital; but the Mexicans had learned to evade such extortions, and it proved hard to collect the allotted amounts. In July, 1847, the British consul general, Mackintosh, loaned $600,000 in exchange for the ratification of an arrangement negotiated with the British bondholders. In four loans the clergy furnished some three millions, all told. The President raised money, it was reported, on public and private securities, sold bonds freely at very low
