PROVINCE OF RIO DE JANEIRO. 



93 



adopted the plan of taking bills from the Portuguese on delivery of goods, 

 which is, at all events, an acknowledgement of the debt. It is still farther to 

 be wished that the increasing demand for English goods would determine the 

 merchants not to part with their commodities under the real value. Competition 

 is, unfortunately, a great obstacle to any unanimity amongst them in this 

 respect, otherwise the Brazilians would have no alternative but to take their 

 merchandise at any fair profitable price that might be determined upon. At 

 present the importations of British goods annually to the Brazil may be estimated 

 at near three miUions sterling, one half of which may be computed to arrive at 

 Rio, from whence returns are made in bills, coffee, sugar, hides, &c. and some 

 cotton. Orders are sent to Bahia, Pernambuco, and Maranham, to ship some 

 part of the return, principally in that article, from thence, for which they send 

 specie, or bills upon the treasuries of those places, received from the govern- 

 ment for stores supplied. At present two or three English houses at Rio 

 de Janeiro furnish the government with the great bulk of its military and 

 naval stores ; but, at different periods, demands resulting from this connexion 

 have met with serious delays in the liquidation, and in cases where the 

 treasury has been under positive engagements by bills, great inconvenience 

 has been sustained, and the parties compelled at last to ^^ait personally 

 upon the King, who has given directions for the payment of those overstanding 

 securities. 



The British merchants also labour under some inconvenience, originating in the 

 misconstruction of or non-compliance with the actual intent of the convention 

 for regulating the levying of the fifteen percent, duty upon that portion of English 

 goods not embraced by the pauta, and which latter instrument is additionally 

 and injuriously partial in its operations, not being a fair standard by which the 

 real value of the article the duty is to be paid upon can be designated. The 

 avowed object between the two governuients in this arrangement is, that the 

 British merchant shall pay a duty of fifteen per cent, upon the fair value of the 

 thing imported ; but the pauta enumerates a fixed value upon certain articles, 

 without reference to the fluctuation of price, and the tide having uniformly of 

 late years flowed downwards in this respect, goods have experienced a diminution 

 from the average valuation of that instrument, consequently, the duty may amount 

 to twenty-five or thirty per cent, in place of fifteen, upon their actual worth. But 

 this is not the only objection to it as an inefficient medium for levying the duties. 

 The pauta determines the value of certain goods at one, two, or three prices. 



