strictly enforced. It is to be hoped that the Executive will take warning by the fate of San Blas; for, otherwise, the establishment of a Custom-house at the new ports will only serve as a signal to the importers of foreign goods to seek other channels of communication with the Interior; and the Revenue will be defrauded, at the same time that all the security of fair commercial enterprise will be destroyed. The evil can only be corrected by the reform of abuses, which compel even the most respectable houses to have recourse to smuggling, as the only means of saving their property from destruction.
One of the most serious defects of the present regulations still remains to be mentioned,—the power given to the Vista, or Inspector, of admitting articles not expressly included in the Tariff, at a valuation, regulated by that of the article most analogous.
The extent to which this provision might operate, was not, at first, foreseen; but, in the course of the last three years, so many articles of European manufacture, formerly unknown in Mexico, have found their way to its shores, that very great room has been left for the exercise of the discretionary powers, with which the Vistas were intrusted.
Amongst the articles not included in the old Arancel, were British Plain Cotton[1] goods, for
- ↑ The cotton goods here alluded to, are those known in Manchester by the name of "Long Cloths," being an imitation of those imported from India formerly, and indeed at present to a
