GOVERNMENT MONOPOLY. 483 
sent 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 hig 
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 somethin 
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 
arein 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. 
“Tam 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 isthe 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 ofa cigar in Cagayan, the answer was 
