Page:Mexico (1829) Volumes 1 and 2.djvu/373

MEXICO. 333 advantages ; for it is impossible, from the arbitrary nature of the valuations, upon which the Import duties are paid, to take the amount of these duties as any criterion of the value of the Imports themselves : I should conceive, however, that a trade in which six hundred and twenty-nine merchant vessels from Europe, the United States, Asia, and the Southern coasts of the Pacific, have found employment, must be more valuable, in the ratio of nearly three to one, than a trade in which two hundred and ten vessels only were engaged. Yet such is the amount of the Shipping returns for 1824, if we add to the one hundred and seventy-six vessels regis- tered at Alvarado and Veracruz, thirty-four more for the five thousand tons of American shipping registered at Tampico during the same year. If, therefore, the trade of 1824 nearly equalled the annual average amount before the Revolution, (Twenty-one millions and a half of dollars,) that of 1826 must have very considerably exceeded it. It is in the Imports that the change principally consists ; for the exportable Agricultural Produce of the country has varied but little since 1824. It is composed almost entirely of the Precious Metals, Cochineal, a little Indigo, Vanilla, Logwood, Jalap, and Zarzaparilla, Tabascan Cacao, and Pep- per, with Cotton, Hides, and Flour, which are beginning to become of some importance in the North. Sufficient time has not yet elapsed for the average value of these dilFerent articles to be ascertained. Indeed, it must, for many years, be subject to continual variations ; as, while the impulse recently given to the country continues, the pro- duce will increase with the facility of exchanging it for Eu- ropean productions, and, consequently, no calculation upon the subject can be hazarded. At present, however, the whole of the Silver raised does not more than cover the difference between the value of the Imports and that of the exportable Agricultural Produce,