Apartado de oro y plata de México

The crown works at Mexico City that separated the gold locked inside silver bars. On a bar of 133 marcos its charge was the largest single deduction after the tithe, and the king ordered poor bars parted at the treasury's expense, at a loss, so that gold otherwise lost would circulate. A reform commission printed in 1822 records that the savings never reached the owners, and asked that its posts go to men trained in chemistry.