trees, and a general system of irrigation, are the remedies for this evil.

The obstacles from positive institution, are chiefly the vast accumulations of landed property in the hands of a few persons, held under all the strictness of Spanish entails, and the extensive tracts of country possessed in common, and therefore illcultivated and neglected. The church lands are inconsiderable in extent, the fee simple of them not being valued at more than two or three millions of dollars. But in addition to the landed estate of the clergy, ecclesiastical bodies have mortgages on land to the amout of 444 millions of dollars, for which the proprietors of the land pay them an annual interest. In 1804, the greedy and necessitous Court of Madrid, hearing of this immense capital belonging to the church, ordained the whole of it to be seized upon for the benefit of the State, and directed its court of Exchequer at Mexico, to exact payment, not as heretofore of the interest, but of the principal itself, and to remit it by the first opportunity to the mother country, to be there paid into the sinking fund established for the extinction of the vales or paper money, with which the kingdom was then inundated. The execution of this order, which must have ruined the greater part of the landed proprietors of New Spain, by withdrawing from them so large a portion of their capital, was attempted by the Mexican exchequer, but with so little success, that, in June 1806, they had not received payment of more than 1,200,000 dollars of the sun demanded.

The wages of labour in New Spain are 21 reals de plata a day, on the coast, and 2 reals de plata, or 4 dollar, on the table land. The average price of maize on the table iand, where it is the principal food of the people, is estimated by Mr Humboldt at 5 livres the fanega. The fanega is somewhat more than 1 bushel; and consequently a labourer, on the table land of Mexico, earns about 13 pecks of Indian corn a day. The ordinary price paid for wheat upon the farm, in New Spain, is about 4 or 5 dollars the carga, or load, which weighs 150 kilograms; but the expense of carriage raises it, in the city of Mexico, to 9 or 10 dollars; the extreine prices being 8 and 15. The ordinary price of 150 kilograms of wheat at Paris, according to Mr. Humboldt, is 30 francs, or 5 dollars. Wheat is therefore nearly twice as dear in the city of Mexico, as it is at Paris. But, on the other hand, it must be considered, that wheat is not so much an article of the first necessity in New Spain as it is in France. According to Mr Humboldt, not more than 1,300,000 persons in the kingdom of Mexico use wheat habitually as an article of subsistence. There is, to be sure, a greater propor

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tion of wheat eaters in the city of Mexico than in any other part of the kingdom; but one half of its population, and that the poorer part, consists of Indians and of mixed casts.

The chapter on the Mines, which follows that on Agriculture, gives a more comprehensive view, and contains more minute and circumstantial details concerning the mines, than any work that has yet been published on the subject. Our readers will not expect from us a complete analysis of this part of Mr Humboldt's book. We must be contented with extracting some of the results; leaving those who have curiosity to acquire information on this important subject, to examine the original work.

It will surprise the generality of our readers, to be told that the silver mines of New Spain, the most productive of any that have been ever known, are remarkable for the poverty of the mineral they contain. A quintal, or 1600 ounces of silver ore, affords, at a medium, not more than 3 or 4 ounces of pure sil

The same quantity of mineral, in the silver mines of Marienberg, in Saxony, yields from 10 to 15 ounces. It is not, therefore, the richness of the ore, but its abundance, and the facility of working it, which render the mines of New Spain so much superior to those of Europe.

The fact of the small number of persons employed in the labour of the mines, is not less contrary to the commonly received opinions on this subject. The mines of Guanaxuato, infinitely richer than those of Potosi ever were, afforded, from 1796 to 1803, near forty millions of dollars in gold and silver, or very near five millions of dollars annually; that is, somewhat less than one fourth of the whole quantity of gold and silver from New Spain; yet these mines, productive as they were, did not employ more than 5000 workmen of every description. The labour of the mines is perfectly free in Mexico; and no species of labour is so well paid. A miner earns from 25 to 30 francs a week; that is, from 5 to 5 dollars; while the wages of the common labourer, as we have already stated, are not more than a dollar and a half. The tenateros, or persons who carry the ore on their backs from the place where it is dug out of the mine, to the place where it is collected in heaps, receive 6 francs for a day's work of six hours. No slaves, criminals, or forced labourers, are ever employed in the Mexican mines.

Mr Humboldt, who is well acquainted with the mines of Germany, points out many defects and imperfections in those of New Spain. One of the most obvious is the clumsy, imperfect, and expensive mode of clearing them from water; in consequence of which, some of the richest mines have been overflowed and abandoned. Another great defect, is the want of arrangement

rangement in the disposition of the galleries, and absence of las teral communications, which add to the uncertainty, and increase prodigiously the expense of working the mines. No

plan of the galleries is formed, and no contrivances used for abridging labour, and facilitating the transport of materials. When new works are undertaken, they are often begun without due consideration, and always conducted on a scale too large and too expensive.

More than three fourths of the silver obtained from America is extracted from the ore by means of quicksilver. The loss of quicksilver in this operation is immense. The quantity consumed in New Spain alone is about 16,000 quintals a year; and in the whole of America, about 25,000 quintals are annually expended, the cost of which, in the colonies, Mr Humboldt estimates at 6,200,000 livres. The greater part of this quicksilver has been furnished of late years by the mine of Almaden in Spain, and the residue was obtained from Istria in Carniola. In 1802, Almaden alone supplied more than 20,000 quintals. Huencavelica in Peru, which in the sixteenth century afforded for some years more than 10,000 quintals of quicksilver a year, does not yield at present quite 4000. Such being the case, it comes to be a question of infinite importance to America, how its mines are to be provided with quicksilver, if the supply from Spain and Germany should be cut off. Humboldt seems to be of opinion, that there are mines of cinnabar in America sufficient for the purpose. He enumerates several in New Spain and New Grenada, as well as in Peru; but, till they are worked or examined with greater care than they have been hitherto, it is impossible to judge what quantity of mercury they are capable of yielding. It is the supply of mercury that determines the productiveness of the silver mines; for such is the abundance of the ore, both in Mexico and Peru, that the only limit to the quantity of silver obtained from these kingdoms, is the want of mercury for amalgamation. The sale of quicksilver in the Spanish colonies has been hitherto a royal monopoly ; and the distribution of it among the miners a source of influence, and possibly of profit, to the servants of the Crown. Galvez, to whom America is indebted for the system of free trade, reduced the price of quicksilver from 82 to 41 dollars the quintal, and thereby contributed most essentially to the subsequent prosperity and increase of the mines.

After concluding his account of the mines of New Spain, Mr Humboldt gives a general view of the mineral riches of the other provinces of America. In Peru, silver ore exists in as grent abundance as in Mexico. The mines of Lauricocha might be

made as productive as those of Guanaxuato. But the art of mining, and the methods of separating the silver from its ore, are still more defective in Peru than they are in New Spain. Potosi is the principal mine in the viceroyalty of Buenos Ayres. Chili furnishes a small quantity of silver, and a large portion of gold. New Grenada and Brazil afford gold only.

The following table of the annual produce of the Spanish mines is calculated from the amount of the royal duties, and is therefore considerably under the truth. The gold is valued at 145 dollars, and the silver at 9 dollars the Spanish

To this sum Mr Humboldt adds above three millions of dollars for contraband, and somewhat less than four and a half millions for the gold of Brazil. We have no means of judging how far he is correct in the allowance which he makes for contraband. But we strongly suspect, that his estimate of the quantity of gold from Brazil (taken from the work of Correa de Serra), is greatly exaggerated. Instead of 29,900 Spanish marks of gold, the quantity which he assigns to that colony, we know, from undoubted authority, that, sixteen years ago, Brazil did not furnish 20,000 marks annually; and that, for many years preceding, the supply from it had been diminishing every year. With this remark, we lay before our readers Mr Humboldt's table.

According to this table, the quantity of gold annually fur nished by America, is, to the quantity of silver annually furnished by the same, as 1 to 46; and the total amount of both, in English money, (valuing the dollar at 4s. 44d.), is 9,515,6251.

Mr Humboldt proceeds next to inquire what has been the total quantity of the precious metals obtained from America since the first discovery of that continent: And, after a long discussion of the different opinions and conjectures on the subject, he concludes, that, from 1492 to 1803, the quantity of gold and silver extracted from the American mines has been equal in value to 5,706,700,000 dollars. Of this immense sum, he estimates the portion brought into Europe, including the booty made by the conquerors of America, at 5,445,000,000 dollars, which gives an average of 17 millions a year. But this importation is far from having been constant or uniform, though, on the whole, it has been always progressive. The following table shows the amount of it at different periods, according to the inquiries and conclusions of Mr Humboldt.

The first period was that of exchange with the natives, or of mere rapine. The second was distinguished by the conquest and plunder of Mexico, Peru and New Grenada, and by the opening of the first mines. The third began with the discovery of the rich mines of Potosi; and in the course of it the conquest of Chili was completed, and various mines opened in New Spain. It was during this period that the great rise of prices, in consequence of the discovery of America, took place throughout Europe; and it is worth remarking, that this effect of the great introduction of gold and silver from America, was felt in the little island of Majorca about the same time the it was experienced in England, that is, about 1575. At the com

mencement of the fourth period, the mines of Potosi began to be exhausted; but those of Lauricocha were discovered, and the produce of New Spain rose from two millions to five millions of dollars annually: The fifth period begins with the discovery of gold in Brazil: And the sixth is distinguished by the prodi gious increase of the mines of New Spain, while those of every other part of America, except Brazil, have also been improving. The average of the last period would have been much higher, if Mr Humboldt, instead of taking the middle of the century, had

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