With regard to the Smuggling Trade, this was by no means the case, for, if the demand for European manufactures became less amidst the general distress, the profits of the illicit trader increased; the facility with which goods were introduced being proportionably greater, and the reduction in the price consequently, such as to enable him to defy competition. I do not, therefore, conceive the amount of the Contraband Trade ever to have fallen below the average before the Revolution, viz. two, or two and a half, millions of dollars.
We must, therefore, make the following additions to the registered Exports as given above, viz.:—
| Dollars. | |
| 109,191,454 | |
| Remittances to Royal Treasury | 10,000,000 |
| Smuggling Trade, in fifteen years, taken at something below the average amount before 1810 | 34,910,953 |
| Allowance for the Exports of three years, the Returns for which have been lost at San Blas, taken at the average of the other twelve, viz. 735,608 dollars | 2,206,824 |
| Balance of the excess of registered Imports in fifteen years at Veracruz | 11,095,042 |
| —————— | |
| Total | 167,404,273 |
| —————— |
guide me. They probably exceeded my estimate considerably, in which case, the value of the Spanish property remitted to Europe might be still farther diminished.
