The mint at Guanajuato, or the right to coin at that place, was contracted for, in 1842, by a most respectable foreign house in Mexico, for $71,000 _cash_, for the term of _fourteen years_, at the same time that another offer was before the government, stipulating for the payment of $400,000 for the same period, payable in annual instalments of $25,000 each. The $71,000 in hand, were, however, deemed of more value than the prospective four hundred thousand. This mint yielded a net annual income of $60,000. These are a few examples presented in illustration of the spendthrift abandonment of the real resources of the country; and the character of the transactions at once discloses the true origin and continuance of national discredit. The demand of the hour was irresistible, and if the minister or the president was unable to comply with it, his political fate was sealed, perhaps forever. The _isolated_ good or evil measures adopted by financiers, have only tended to augment the confusion. Each government, of the thirty or more which have swayed Mexico since her independence, has been forced to contend not only with its own errors but with those of its predecessors; and hence the public has naturally lost faith and hope in politicians as soon as they assumed the helm of state. No matter what the personal character, or what the financial talents of ministers might be, the people believed them to be immediately compromised or paralized by circumstances and political necessity. We will present the reader a view of Mexican _national expenses_, according to ministerial estimates during a series of years between the establishment of the federal constitution in 1824 and the war with the United States. This statement, in regard to a country which has been stationary in population and industry, with an augmenting outlay of money, is somewhat remarkable: 1825 the national expenses were $17,100,000 1826 " " " 16,666,463 1827 to 1828 " " " 13,363,098 1828 to 1829 the national expenses were 15,604,000 1830 to 1831 " " " 17,438,000 1832 to 1833 " " " 22,392,000 According to report of commissioners to Chamber of Deputies in 1846, 21,254,134 Period of Santa Anna's administration, 25,222,304 These dates, it will be observed comprehend epochs in which the country has been governed by the federal system as well as those in which extraordinary powers were conferred on national magistrates. In the preceding yearly amounts, it should be recollected, that a few of them comprise occasional sums paid on account of the foreign and domestic debt; but, on an average, thirteen millions of dollars may be considered as the annual outlay.