surrounded the Spaniards, and from the lethean stagnation into which she fell in future years under Spanish misrule.
Don Juan Francisco Guemes y Horcasitas, Count de Revilla-Gigedo—the first. XLI. Viceroy of New Spain. 1746–1755.
The Conde de Revilla-Gigedo, the first of that name who was viceroy of Mexico, reached the capital on the 9th of July, 1746, and on the 12th of the same month, his master, Philip V. died, leaving Ferdinand VI. as his successor. Under the reign of this enlightened nobleman the colony prospered rapidly, and his services in increasing the royal revenues were so signally successful that he was retained in power for nine years. Mexico had become a large and beautiful city. The mining districts were extraordinarily prolific, and no year of his government yielded less than eleven millions of dollars;—the whole sum that passed through the national mint during his term being one hundred and fourteen millions, two hundred and thirty-one thousand dollars of the precious metals! The population of the capital amounted to fifty thousand families composed of Spaniards, Europeans and creoles,—forty thousand mestizos, mulattoes, negroes,—and