238

DECLINING PRODUCE

CHAP. XXV.

likely to fall into the opposite error, and rather toover than under-state the expected produce. Thehighest estimate of what may be the actual coin-age does not carry it higher than twelve milliondollars, which it is said “ will probably be at-tained by the year 1830.”

A periodical work entitled the “ QuarterlyMining Review,” four numbers of which haveappeared in London , gives a variety of detailsof the operations of the several adventurers inAmerica , into which it is not within the compassof the plan of this inquiry to enter. It is, how-ever, impossible to go through the pages of thatwork without coming to the conclusion that what-ever may be the future products of their under-takings, they have not had hitherto the effect ofincreasing the quantity of gold and silver raisedin Mexico to an extent much beyond what wasproduced in the year 1825, when their works hadscarcely commenced. In that year, by the state-ment in the Appendix , No. 7> it is seen that themints of Mexico, Guadalaxara , Durango, and Zac-catecas together produced ten million seven hun-dred and forty-two thousand eight hundred andsixty-five dollars. As some progress may havebeen since made, we can scarcely be subject to anyerror in allowing for the years 1826 and 1827 theproduct to have amounted to eleven million fivehundred thousand dollars, and for the years 1828