232

DECLINING PRODUCE

CHAP. XXV.

some with sixty or seventy thousand dollars.Thus the country suffered a loss which none ofthe successive governments upon the republicanplan were enabled to repair, because no con-fidence could be placed on the stability of anylaws that were enacted, or on that of the in-dividuals to whom the execution of them werecommitted.

Whilst Mexico and the continental Spanish settlements in America have been injured bythe flight of the capitalists, who were, generallyspeaking, the most intelligent, honest, and activepart of the community, the Island of Cuba, andthe southern part of Spain itself, and, in a lessdegree, the south of France , have been muchbenefited by the accession of capital which therefugees have transferred to those districts,though it was only the remnant of their formerfortunes.

Mr. Ward, in his valuable work on Mexico ,has communicated several facts relating to thedefalcation in the mines during the fifteen yearsof the civil wars, which serve to show the mostprominent districts where the diminution was felt.f ‘ In Guanaxuato,” he says, “ the amount of theprecious metals diminished from eight millioneight hundred and fifty-two thousand four hun-dred and seventy-two marcs of silver, and twenty-seven thousand eight hundred and ten marcs ofgold (the produce of the fifteen years preceding