een to encourage the trade, that formerly,
at various times, they very nearly all but ruined it, by imposing
import duties on all the produce of the provinces that came to
Manilla from them, for sale. This, added to the export duties at
the time of its shipment to foreign markets, so much increased the
cost of those articles in Manilla, that the foreign merchants there,
finding they could procure similar merchandise at other places for less
money, of course would not buy it; and the native traders, finding
their produce unsaleable except at losing prices, could not make any
further purchases from the native agriculturists, which caused so much
distress in the country, that the provinces got into a high state of
disaffection on several occasions, from the same cause; upon seeing
which the Government were wise enough to repeal their restrictive
laws, and allow the free interchange of commodities between all the
provinces of the Philippines.

For instead, as was supposed, of its falling upon the exporting foreign
merchants, and on those who bought their cargoes of Manilla produce
from them at the port of discharge, the tax fell upon the native
agriculturists, inasmuch as they had to reduce the former prices of
all their produce which paid the tax, and to equalise them to the
rates at which similar merchandise was procurable in other markets,
where no tax of the sort existed;--and this, of course, compelled the
cultivators of these articles in the Philippines to sell the produce
of their farms for less money than they formerly obtained for the same
goods. By so doing, it was equivalent to reducing the former wages of
their labour, or of the produce of their land--the effects of which
were speedily felt and comprehended by them, although some of the
officials, who imposed it, might scoff at the causes they assigned,
and reiterate their crude and erroneous notions of political economy,
to prove that it could not affect them, but must be paid by the great
merchants, or by the consumers of their produce in Europe. They quite
forgot that these could be supplied with the same things from other
places, where they were not subjected to the tax, and of course were
procurable cheaper.

Owners of vessels suitable for the coasting trade, who reside
in Manilla, have one advantage over the provincial ship-builders;
namely, that when the government service gives employment to shipping,
they are in a better position for offering for it,