Page:Narrative of an Official Visit to Guatemala.djvu/491

Rh the funds of the mint as well as upon many other resources which the exigencies of that unfortunate period seemed, with some degree of plausibility, to exact. Then, the constituent assembly suppressed the branch of income arising from bulls, that of fifths on gold and silver, that of the moiety of secular revenues, the duty upon passing goods of import and export through the garita, or customs guard-house, and that of two per cent, paid by the growers of tobacco.—The ordinary alcavala, or internal duty, was reduced from six to four per cent, the former rate having been exacted in the time of the Mexican government: national iron was made free of duty, and also, for five years, all kinds of warlike stores either for consumption or trans-shipment.

The abolition of these taxes, which was in pursuance of the decree of the 1st of December 1823, at the same time that it gave a decided impulse to national industry, left the treasury in a most impoverished state. The federative government obtained little