not have been retailed under five reals a yard, had the duties upon them been paid, were publicly sold in the Capital, (in 1825,) at three reals, and that in such quantities, that established houses were obliged to dispose of commission cargoes, at a loss of thirty and forty per cent., in order to realise something for their correspondents in England.
This evil was corrected a little by the gradual organization of the Custom-house establishments upon the coast, which diminished, in some places, the facility, with which the Smuggling trade had previously been carried on: but there is reason to believe, that at the present moment, more than one-Third[1] of the whole of the European manufactures consumed in Mexico, is introduced without the payment of any duty.
In 1826, the Congress appeared to be sensible of the injury which the Revenue sustained from such a state of things, and seemed inclined to apply the only effectual remedy, by reducing the duties. A committee of the Chamber of Deputies, after a long investigation of invoice prices, compiled from them a scale of valuations, in which most of the errors of the old Tariff were corrected; and proposed, (besides) an additional reduction of Fourteen per cent, in the duties payable upon these valuations, so that the
- ↑ It is difficult to fix the exact proportion. One third part seems a great deal, and yet, in the Northern ports, it is thought to exceed this.
