or State frontiers, that few are willing or able to pay them. Hence few American mechanics find their way into the country, unless in accordance with special contract."
This practice of locally taxing interstate commerce is in direct contravention of an article in the Mexican Constitution of 1857, and it is said also of express decisions of the national Supreme Court. Several of the leading States of Mexico have at different times tried the experiment of prohibiting it by legislative enactments; but the States and municipalities of the country are always hard pressed to raise money for their current expenditures, and find the taxing of merchandise in transit so easy a method of partially solving their difficulties that the Federal authorities have not yet been able, or, speaking more correctly, willing to prevent it.[1]
- ↑ In October, 1883, in response to a call of the President of the Republic, the Governors of the several States of Mexico appointed each two delegates, who assembled in convention at the capital, and after some deliberation published a report which exhibited the incompatibilities, disadvantages and abuses of the system in the most convincing manner; but acknowledging, at the same time, that, as all the State governments were more or less dependent upon it for their revenues, they could not recommend its present abolition. The report also concluded with a recommendation "that Congress should at once legalize a practice which a constitutional prohibition had failed to prevent, and which, under existing circumstances, it would be impolitic to suppress entirely." And, in deference to the suggestions of this conference, the Mexican Congress subsequently passed a law, with a view of modifying and limiting the authority of the State and munici-
