At the Havannah, as in every place where commerce and the wealth it produces increase rapidly, complaints are heard of the prejudicial influence exercised by them on ancient manners. We cannot here stop to compare the first state of the island of Cuba, when covered with pasturage, before the taking of the capital by the English, and its present condition, since it has become the metropolis of the West Indies; nor to throw into the balance the candour and simplicity of manners of an infant society, against the manners that belong to the development of an advanced civilization. The spirit of commerce, leading to the love of wealth, no doubt brings nations to depreciate what money cannot obtain. But the state of human things is happily such that what is most desirable, most noble, most free in man, is owing only to the inspirations of the soul, to the extent and amelioration of its intellectual faculties. Were the thirst of riches to take absolute possession of every class of society, it would infallibly produce the evil complained of by those who see with regret what they call the preponderance of the industrious system; but the increase of commerce, by multiplying the connections between nations, by opening an immense sphere to the activity of the mind, by pouring capital into agriculture, and creating new wants by the refinement of luxury, furnishes a remedy against the supposed dangers.
FINANCE.
The increase of the agricultural prosperity of the island of Cuba and the influence of the accumulation of wealth on the value of importations, have raised the public revenue in these latter years to four millions and a half, perhaps five millions of piastres. The custom-house of the Havannah, which before 1794 yielded less than 600,000 piastres, and from 1797 to 1800, 1,900,000 piastres, pours into the treasury, since the declaration of free trade, a revenue (importe liquido) of more than 3,100,000 piastres.* (* The custom-house of Port-au-Prince, at Hayti, produced in 1825, the sum of 1,655,764 piastres; that of Buenos Ayres, from 1819 to 1821, average year, 1,655,000 piastres. See Centinela de La Plata, September 1822 Number 8; Argos de Buenos Ayres Number 85.)
The island of Cuba as yet contains only one forty-second part of the population of France; and one half of its inhabitants, being in the most abject indigence, consume but little. Its revenue is nearly equal to that of the Republic of Columbia, and it exceeds the revenue of all the custom-houses of the United States* before the year 1795, when that confederation had 4,500,000 inhabitants, while the island of Cuba contained only 715,000. (* The custom-houses of the United States, which yielded in 1801 to 1808 sixteen millions of dollars, produced in 1815 but 7,282,000.) The principal source of the public revenue of this fine colony is the custom-house, which alone produces above three-fifths, and amply suffices for all the wants of the internal administration and military defence. If in these latter years, the expense of the general treasury of the Havannah amounted to more than four millions of piastres, this increase of expense is solely owing to the obstinate struggle maintained between the mother country and her freed colonies. Two millions of piastres were employed to pay the land and sea forces which poured back from the American continent, by the Havannah, on their way to the Peninsula. As long as Spain, unmindful of her real interests, refuses to recognize the independence of the New Republics, the island of Cuba, menaced by Columbia and the Mexican Confederation, must support a military force for its external defence, which ruins the colonial finances. The Spanish naval force stationed in the port of the Havannah generally costs above 650,000 piastres. The land forces require nearly one million and a half of piastres. Such a state of things cannot last indefinitely if the Peninsula do not relieve the burden that presses upon the colony.
From 1789 to 1797 the produce of the custom-house at the Havannah never rose to more than 700,000 piastres. In 1814 it was 1,855,117. From 1815 to 1819 the royal taxes in the port of the Havannah amounted to 11,575,460 piastres; total 18,284,807 piastres; or, average year, 3,657,000 piastres, of which the municipal taxes formed 0.36.
The public revenue of the Administracion general de Rentas of the jurisdiction of Havannah amounted:
in 1820 to 3,631,273 piastres. in 1821 to 3,277,639 piastres. in 1822 to 3,378,228 piastres.
The royal and municipal taxes of importation at the custom-house of the Havannah in 1823 were 2,734,563 piastres.
The total amount of the revenue of the Havannah in 1824 was 3,025,300 piastres.
In 1825 the revenue of the town and jurisdiction of the Havannah was 3,350,300 piastres.