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462 to which they are declared liable, must be paid, without any abatement or reduction whatever, unless in cases where an error in the calculation, or in the payment can be proved.

Such is the Tariff which has subsisted during the last six years, more from the difficulty of agreeing upon a better, than from any peculiar excellence in the present system, the defects of which are but too apparent, and have led to a great deal of disagreeable discussion.

It is not of the amount of the duties that foreign merchants complain, so much as of the absurd scale of valuations, upon which these duties are paid.

The value of the Imports permitted by the Tariff was fixed, (as I have already stated,) in the first instance, not upon sworn ad valorem invoices, as is the case in most other countries, but upon an estimate of the current prices during the monopoly of the Mother-country; so that in lieu of forty-three and a half per cent., one hundred, and one hundred and fifty per cent, is, in fact, paid, upon many articles, which are rated in the Tariff at five and six times their real value.

Where these excessive duties do not operate as an absolute prohibition, they hold out so great a premium to the illicit trader, that a great part of the commerce of the country, is unavoidably thrown into his hands, to the detriment of the established merchant; and this system is already carried to such an extent in Mexico, that Cottons, which could