[From a Correspondent.]
The Austrian government, like several other Continental governments,
still adheres to the system of high duties, amounting to prohibition, on
foreign manufactured goods. This is done with the intention of
_favouring home manufactures_. Now mark the consequences! In 1817, an
order came from Vienna, assimilating the custom-houses of Lombardy to
those of the rest of the empire, and subjecting foreign manufactures to
a duty of 60 per cent. on the value, equal, in short, to prohibition in
most cases. Large buildings were soon after erected into manufactories,
a few clever workmen engaged for a time, some pieces of calicoes,
muslins, &c. woven and pompously exhibited, after which the
_manufacturer_ supplied himself with English, Swiss, and French cloths,
by means of smuggling, which was carried on to an immense extent all
along the vast line of frontiers, the delivery being insured by
companies established in the neighbouring states, and the pieces, marked
with the imperial stamp, came out of the manufactories as home
productions; the shops were full of foreign goods. Meantime, the
custom-house receipts fell off one-half, custom-house officers and
gendarmes were multiplied and maintained at a vast expense, whilst all
along the frontier districts, there sprung up a proportionate array of
smugglers, men who, by their perilous vocation, become familiar with
violence and bloodshed, and by whom the peace of the country is
continually endangered. The mock-manufacturers, if prosecuted, can show
that they are able to make such and such pieces of the goods, and unless
taken in the act of smuggling, there are no means of convicting them.
The smuggling is carried on chiefly through the frontiers of Piedmont
and Switzerland, countries which have had the good sense to reject the
_protecting_ system. A great proportion of the population of the Canton
Ticino lives entirely by smuggling foreign goods into Austrian Lombardy.
The lakes Maggiore and Lugano, the waters of which are considered
neutral; afford the smugglers great facilities. The _efficiency_ of the
protection afforded to home manufactures by prohibitory duties may be
estimated by the fact that an insurance may be readily effected upon
smuggled goods at a rate varying from 10 to 15 per cent. This fact is
notorious in Austrian Lombardy. The _results_ of the system are, loss to
the government, which might derive a moderate duty on importation,--loss
to the consumer who pays high for goods, which, after all, he must
use,--and loss to the country at large, which has to support a useless
host of custom-house officers, and whose exports are limited by the
trammels thus imposed on importation. Besides these evils, habits of
fraud and contempt for the laws are fostered among the trading classes,
and among the rural population of the border districts.
---------------------