42 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Add 6 per cent as per tariff $ 2 20 



$46 26 



Add 2 per cent municipal duty 93 



$47 19 



Add 5 per cent consumption duty 2 36 



$49 55 



Dispatch of goods at Buena Vista station, city of Mexico 38 



Stamps for permit 60 ^ ^ 



$107 03 

 Cartage in city of Mexico ^ 



Total $107 78 



Resume : 



Original cost of stove, with exchange $31 80 



Freight, consular fees, and forwarding 24 80 



Import duties 50 43 



Cartage V5 



Total $107 78 



Under such a system articles of the most common use in the 

 United States are from their increase of price necessarily made 

 articles of luxury. 



Again, the Mexican tariff provides that the effects of immi- 

 grants shall be admitted free. " But this is rendered practically 

 a dead letter, from the fact that the interior duties are levied on 

 everything the immigrant has before he gets settled ; and these 

 are so heavy that immigration has been greatly discouraged. A 

 carpenter, or other mechanic, who desires to get employment in 

 Mexico, has such heavy duties levied on his tools on passing the 

 national or State frontiers that few are willing or able to pay 

 them. Hence, few American mechanics find their way into the 

 country, unless in accordance with special contract/' 



The existence in a state of the New World of a system of taxa- 

 tion so antagonistic to all modern ideas, and so destructive of all 

 commercial freedom, is certainly very curious, and prompts to 

 the following reflections : First, how great were the wisdom and 

 foresight of the framers of the Constitution of the United States 

 in providing, at the very commencement of the Federal Union, 

 that no power to tax in this manner, and for their own use or 

 benefit, should ever be permitted to the States that might com- 

 pose it (Article I, section 10). Second, how did such a system 

 come to be ingrafted on Mexico, for it is not a modern contriv- 

 ance ? All are agreed that it is an old-time practice and a legacy 

 of Spanish domination. But, further than this, may it not be an- 

 other of those numerous relics of European medievalism which, 

 having utterly disappeared in the countries of their origin, seem 

 to have become embalmed, as it were, in what were the old Spanish 



