e
by ourselves; pork, fresh or salted, smoked or corned; woolen or cotton
blankets or counterpanes, shoes and slippers, wheat and grain of all
kinds. Such is a list of but part of the articles whose importation is
prohibited by the Mexican tariff. These prohibitions should not be
permitted to continue, because they exclude most of our products and
fabrics and prevent the collection of revenue. We turn from the
prohibitions to the actual duties imposed by Mexico. The duties are
specific throughout, and almost universally by weight, irrespective of
value; are generally protective or exorbitant, and without any
discrimination for revenue. The duties proposed to be substituted are
moderate when compared with those imposed by Mexico, being generally
reduced to a standard more than one-half below the Mexican duties. The
duties are also based upon a discrimination throughout for revenue, and,
keeping in view the customs and habits of the people of Mexico, so
different from our own, are fixed in each case at that rate which it is
believed will produce in the Mexican ports the largest amount of
revenue.

In order to realize from this system the largest amount of revenue, it
would be necessary that our Army and Navy should seize every important
port or place upon the Gulf of Mexico or California, or on the Pacific,
and open the way through the interior for the free transit of exports
and imports, and especially that the interior passage through the
Mexican isthmus should be secured from ocean to ocean, for the benefit
of our commerce and that of all the world. This measure, whilst it would
greatly increase our revenue from these duties and facilitate
communication between our forces upon the eastern and western coasts of
Mexico, would probably lead at the conclusion of a peace to results of
incalculable importance to our own commerce and to that of all the
world.

In the meantime the Mexican Government monopoly in tobacco, from which a
considerable revenue is realized by Mexico, together with the culture
there which yields that revenue, should be abolished, so as to diminish
the resources of that Government and augment our own by collecting the
duty upon all the imported tobacco. The Mexican interior transit duties
should also be abolished, and also their internal Government duty on
coin and bullion. The prohibition of exports and the duties upon exports
should be annulled, and especially the heavy export duty on coin and
bull