Page:Mexico in 1827 Vol 1.djvu/476

446 of activity in the intercourse between the New and the Old World, taken in conjunction with the rise in the Customs from Four to Eight millions of dollars, (allowing something less than One million for the two months not included in the receipts of 1826,) augurs well in favour of the growing importance of Mexican Trade. It may not indeed, as yet realize the golden visions of those, who, in 1825, regarded the New World as a source of instantaneous wealth; but it certainly holds out to a well-regulated spirit of commercial enterprise, a prospect of great ulterior advantages. I have not the means of determining exactly the present extent of those advantages; for it is impossible, from the arbitrary nature of the valuations, upon which the Import duties are paid, to take the amount of these duties as any criterion of the value of the Imports themselves: I should conceive, however, that a Trade in which Six hundred and twenty-nine merchant vessels from Europe, the United States, Asia, and the Southern coasts of the Pacific, have found employment, must be more valuable, in the ratio of nearly three to one, than a Trade in which two hundred and ten vessels only were engaged.

Yet such is the amount of the Shipping returns for 1824, if we add to the One hundred and seventy-six vessels registered at Alvarado and Veracruz, Thirty-four more for the five thousand tons of American shipping registered at Tampico during the same year. If therefore, the Trade of 1824 nearly