VALPARAISO. 289 



And, moreover, all cargoes must pass through Mendoza, and receive 

 a certificate there, or they will not be allowed to enter Chile. All 

 this is followed by the narrowest and most vexatious rules for mani- 

 fests, for trans-shipments, for land-carriage, &c. that the ingenuity of 

 man has devised, bearing alike upon foreigners and natives, merchants 

 and husbandmen. 



The most curious thing in the whole production is the notice in the 

 preamble of the twelfth section concerning importations. The duties 

 on all these are so high, as in many cases to amount to a prohibition, 

 with the viewof protecting home-manufactures, forgetting that, except- 

 ing hats and small beer, there is not a single manufactory established 

 in Chile ; for we can hardly call such the soap-boiling and candle- 

 dipping of the country. And because a man in Santiago has actually 

 made a pair of stockings in a day, no more foreign stockings are to 

 be introduced ; so that the ladies must learn to knit, or go barefoot ; 

 for it is hardly to be hoped that the one pair manufactured per day 

 will supply even the capital. Better take a few Manchester stockings 

 until he of Santiago has a few more workmen employed. As there 

 are literally no Chilian cabinet-makers, the prohibitions of foreign 

 chairs and tables will send the young ladies back to squatting on the 

 estrada ; and as it must be some years, perhaps centuries, before they 

 will raise and weave silk here, or manufacture muslins, we shall have 

 them clad in their ancient woollen manteaus ; and future travellers 

 will praise the pretty savages, instead of delighting in the society of 

 well-dressed and well-bred young ladies. The passage which I allude 

 to is so curious I must copy it, for the benefit of those of my friends 

 who wish to form a just estimate of the wisdom of the Chileno legis- 

 lature in these matters. 



After noticing that these regulations must lead either to an increase 

 of the public funds, or to an entire cessation of all importations, 

 which the minister very properly contemplates as the most probable 

 result, he says, " Would to God that these regulations may bring 

 " about the day when we shall see the total products of our 

 " custom-houses, as far as relates to foreign goods, reduced to a 



p p 



