total reduction would have amounted to nearly fifty per cent.
This project was adopted by the Lower House, but rejected by the Senate, and the sessions of 1826 terminated without any understanding between the two Chambers having been effected.
In the present Congress, nothing has yet been done, but as the Tariff appears to be one of the principal objects of the extraordinary sessions, (November 1827,) there is reason to suppose, that, early in the ensuing year, some new arrangement will take place.
In addition to the modification of the Duties, which, for their own sakes, the Mexicans must, sooner or later, adopt, there are other essential points, in which a change is hardly less requisite.
Very great inconvenience has been occasioned by that part of the existing regulations, by which the Coasting trade is reserved to National vessels; for, by a strange misinterpretation of this article. Foreign merchant ships arriving on the coast of Mexico with a cargo of goods consigned to different ports, and different correspondents, are forced to discharge the whole, at the first port which they enter, and to procure, at an enormous expense, Mexican small craft to convey the goods intended for other ports to the place of their destination, or to send them overland, which, in most cases, from the total want of roads, and the greatness of the distance, is impracticable.
