GOVERNMENT MONOPOLY. 483 



Bent to Spain in leaves and cigars, being estimated as an 

 annual average contribution exceeding 800,000 dollars. The 

 sale of tobacco is a strict government monopoly, but the 

 impossibility of keeping up any sufficient machinery for the 

 protection of that monopoly is obvious even to the least 

 observant. The cultivator, who is bound to deliver all his 

 produce to the government, first takes care of himself and his 

 neighbors, and secures the best of his growth for his own 

 benefit. From functionaries able to obtain the best which 

 the government brings to market, a present is often volun- 

 teered, which shows that they avail themselves of something 

 better than the best. And in discussing the matter with the 

 most intelligent of the empleados, they agreed that the 

 emancipation of the producer, the manufacturer and the 

 seller, and the establishment of a simple duty, would be more 

 productive to the revenue than the present vexatious and 

 inefficient system of privileges. 



" In 1810 the deliveries were 50,000 bales (of two arrobas), of 

 which Gapan furnished 47,000 and Cayayan 2,000. In 1841 

 Cayayan furnished 170,000 bales ; Gapan, 84,000 ; and New 

 Biscay, 34,000. But the produce is enormously increased ; 

 and so large is the native consumption, of which a large pro. 

 portion pays no duty, that it would not be easy to make even 

 an approximative estimate of the extent and value of the whole 

 tobacco harvest. "Where the fiscal authorities are so scattered 

 and so corrupt ; where communications are so imperfect and 

 sometimes wholly interrupted ; where large tracts of territory 

 are in the possession of tribes unsubdued or in a state of imper- 

 fect subjection ; where even among the more civilized Indians 

 the rights of property are rudely defied, and civil authority 

 imperfectly maintained ; where smuggling, though it may be 

 attended with some risk, is scarcely deemed by any body an 

 offense, and the very highest functionaries themselves smoke 

 and offer to their guests contraband cigars on account of their 

 superior quality, it may well be supposed that lax laws, lax 

 morals and lax practices, harmonize with each other, and that 

 such a state of things as exists in the Philippines must be the 

 necessary, the inevitable result. 



" I am informed by the alcalde mayor of Cayayan that he 

 sent in 1858 to Manilla from that province tobacco for no less 

 a value than 2,000,000 dollars. The quality is the best of the 

 Philippines ; it is all forwarded in leaf to the capital. The to- 

 bacco used by the natives is not subject to the estanco, and on 

 my inquiring as to the cost of a cigar in Cagayan, the answer was 



