Lighting Mexico City: the general street lighting of 1790 and how it was paid for

In 1790 the ayuntamiento of Mexico City was ordered to find a permanent revenue for a general street lighting, and proposed three reales on each load of flour entering the capital — about 37,500 pesos a year against 35,429 pesos of lanterns already built. Its argument for the tax was arithmetic: spread over the 430 loaves a load of flour yields, the charge came to a quarter of an ounce of bread. By 1864 the city burned 1,914 lanterns of three competing designs.