The importance of leaving the transit trade free and unrestricted, need not be commented upon; and the advantages which may arise from Java becoming the entrepôt of trade, are too obvious to require notice.
From the same reasons which induced every facility being afforded to the transit trade in general, opium was allowed to pass free of duty, under such regulations as were deemed necessary for preventing the farms of internal consumption being clandestinely invaded.
As the produce of the Island exported to a foreign market seemed equal to bear a general export duty of three per cent., without materially affecting the agriculture or commerce of the country, that rate was inserted in the regulation; but it would have been far more agreeable to me, and more consonant to the principles on which the revenue arrangements have been made, to have rendered all exports from the Island free of duty:—a measure which may be eventually adopted, whenever the state of our finances may admit.
Under the repeated suggestions and opinions communicated by the Supreme Government, and the present state of trade, I felt myself imperiously called upon to rescind the existing regulations, regarding the exportation of foreign specie, and by the amended regulations to admit of the free exportation of bullion, considering, with the Supreme Government, "that although the prohibiting the exportation of bullion from Java might have been advisable, to meet a temporary object; yet as such prohibitions are on general principles impolitic,"from
