tured goods. Foreign trade did not touch the Mexican people in their daily lives. There was nothing to indicate that the trade of Mexico with the more advanced countries would soon assume the character of their trade with each other. Even in amount the trade was disappointing and showed no tendency to increase; the true economic development of Mexico was still unbegun.
The statistical record of Mexican commerce for the first half-century of independence is highly fragmentary, due partly to a failure to realize the importance of such a record and partly to the disturbed conditions in the life of the republic. Plans for publications, bravely undertaken, were seldom continued for more than a few years. For the period 1828-53, a quarter of a century, no publication of a commercial balance of the trade of the republic occurred.
What the trade developments were is further obscured by the shifting tariff system and by the fact that the customs house accounts were often neglected completely when revolutionary forces got control of the ports. There were, moreover, special rates collected in certain ports of entry and special remissions of taxes to persons and places. Within the country also the internal customs houses collecting the octroi taxes, historically known as alcabalas, were a burden on commerce, the effect of which it is impossible to estimate.
The new republican government threw open more ports than the colonial administration and allowed the general entry of foreign owned ships. On the other hand, the general tariff policy, if that phrase can be used in connection with anything so capricious and illogical
