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Though it is not very probable that any part of a tax, which is

not only imposed upon one of the most proper subjects of

taxation, a mere luxury and superfluity, but which affords so

very important a revenue as the tax upon silver, will ever be

given up as long as it is possible to pay it; yet the same

impossibility of paying it, which, in 1736. made it necessary to

reduce it from one-fifth to one-tenth, may in time make it

necessary to reduce it still further; in the same manner as it

made it necessary to reduce the tax upon gold to one-twentieth.

That the silver mines of Spanish America, like all other mines,

become gradually more expensive in the working, on account of the

greater depths at which it is necessary to carry on the works,

and of the greater expense of drawing out the water, and of

supplying them with fresh air at those depths, is acknowledged by

everybody who has inquired into the state of those mines.