CHAPTER XXII.
COMMERCE AND RAILROADS.
1800-1887.
Symptoms of Free Trade — A Commercial Inroad — Exports and Imports — Customs and Custom-houses — Cabotage — Abolishment of the Alcabalas — Smuggling — The Mercantile Marine — The Carrying Trade — Commercial Regulations — Foreign Steamers — Case of the 'Danube' — First Mexican Steamships — The Mexican Transatlantic S. S. Co. — Unjust Taxation — Tariffs — Metropolitan Highways — Mercantile Tribunals — Brokers — Banks — The Mail Service — Nickel Coinage — The Decimal System — Railroads — The Mexican Railway — Development — Projected Lines — Considerations — Telegraphs, Telephones, and Electric Lights.
The permission granted in 1799, consequent upon the existing war with Great Britain, for neutral vessels to come direct from Spain to her American possessions, gave way to a still more liberal law, which held good from 1805 to 1808, but was only formally repealed May 17 and July 27, 1809. After this special permits were at times issued to private parties residing in the colonies to bring cargoes from foreign ports. Before and after the period above mentioned, other measures were enacted to do away with impediments to trade. The latest one, in 1820,[1] was the
- ↑ Aug. 10, 1804, the reëxportation of goods to other open ports was allowed. Jan. 16, 1806, vessels from Spain were permitted to enter and discharge at intermediate ports. During the war of independence, various ports were opened to trade at different dates: Sisal in 1810; San Bias in 1812; Tampico in 1816; and finally, in Nov. 1820, the Spanish córtes decreed the opening of the ports of Tlacotálpan, Matagorda, Matamoros, Soto la Marina, and Pueblo Viejo de Tampico in the gulf, and Acapulco, San Bias, and Mazatlan on the Pacific. Cortes. Diario, 1811, v. 337; 1820, vi. 15-18; xi. 28; Cortes, Act. Pub.,
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