A Venezuelan Finance Minister treating on this evil has proved that during the first sixteen years of the Independence, out of two hundred million dollars' worth of goods imported into the country, one hundred and twenty nine millions were smuggled. For 1864, the annual loss to the government was estimated to be equal to six millions of dollars, by smuggling and various Customs frauds. These estimates were made up by comparing the fictitious home returns of articles' imported, and the published returns of foreign countries' exports. The frauds of Customs officials are carried on in quite a wholesale manner. For instance, about 1864, in one of the many futile attempts at reformation, one single item will show on what a stupendous scale these frauds are carried on. From municipal taxation returns the province of Caracas alone, had been known to consume 100 barrels of flour aday: whereas according to the Custom House returns 69 barrels a day was put down as the total consumption of the whole of Venezuela. The incessant revolutions that have been continually distracting Venezuela and keeping it back from the path of progress, nearly all have commenced at the Custom Houses owing to the frauds of the officials causing the revenues tofallshort. To make up these deficiencies the rates have to be raised, until the necessaries of life become too dear for men of small means, then comes the usual explosion, unless recourse is had to foreign loans.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.