Although there is no saying much with accuracy of the present revenue of Paraguay,[114] it is certain that it suffices to meet its public ordinary expenses, which cannot be more moderate. Paraguay has not that numerous body of employés which has been, and is still, a cancer gnawing into the heart of the new states which so proudly clothe themselves with the title of republics. Her functionaries are not numerous. They mostly receive but very slender emoluments, either because living is very cheap in Paraguay, or because offices are there considered rather as public duties to fulfil, than places which, to be well filled, should be well remunerated. The judges are annually selected amongst the inhabitants of the different districts, of divers professions, without any necessity for their engaging in preliminary studies, or for their being previously destined for the magistracy, and the government allows them only what is indispensable for their office expenses and the dispatch of business, without any fees being paid by the parties concerned. When the service requires more functionaries, and those of special capacity, who will have to devote themselves exclusively to the duties of their employments, the public treasury will be better provided, and in a better position to remunerate those whom the government will have to employ.[115]
Whatever may be the sum, however, at present produced by each branch of the revenue, it cannot but increase, and rapidly, not only in consequence of the development of those things on which duties are chargeable, but also because, with time and experience, the distribution of the taxes, &c., will be improved.[116] They will be convinced of a truth long accepted in political economy, but which does not the less pass for paradoxical, elsewhere than in Paraguay, viz.: that duties, when moderate and properly collected, are much more productive than high ones.
It was perhaps this principle which gave rise to the reform introduced by the President’s Government in the Tariff. That of 1841, which was imprinted with the doctrines of the protectionist school, was reformed and reduced by M. Lopez in 1846. That of 1841, not content with establishing very heavy duties on the generality of articles imported, and on all those exported, was intended to favour, at the expense of all, some hatters and vine-dressers who made bad hats and still worse wine, and levied a duty of 40 per cent. on wines and hats imported. The Tariff of 1846 has remedied these evils, and diminished the duties in general, but they are still too heavy, especially those on exports, which ought to be reduced almost to nothing.[117]
Respecting the trade that may be expected to ensue between this country and Paraguay, I am not fanatical enough to suppose that it will be either very rapid or very extensive at first. But, at the same time, as little can I share the apprehensions of a Buenos Ayrean writer quoted in the leading English journal on the arrival of the mail of the 16th of this month, (April, 1854,) that because certain mercantile ventures to the Parana had not proved lucrative, therefore the means of the inhabitants, and, by inference, of Paraguay also, were at a very low ebb, and that there was an indisposition to commerce. The same consequences, and from the same causes, were observable in China on the first partial opening of intercourse with that empire. The markets were not suited with proper goods and were glutted with superfluities. As to Paraguay, at all events, we know that both the taste and the means exist in the indulgence of what among so comparatively simple a people may be considered great luxuries.[118] Opportunity alone was wanted; and now that that opportunity is afforded, and that European wealth will be forthcoming for the numerous indigenous commodities so much required in this quarter of the world, there can be no doubt that all reasonable expectations formed by the parties to the Malmesbury treaty, and by those who long ago laboured to bring such treaties about, will soon begin to be realized.
SIR CHARLES HOTHAM, K.C.B.
This distinguished officer, now Governor of the Australian Colony of Victoria, comes of an ancient ancestry, many members of whom attained eminence in that special branch of the public service in which he himself has acquired such deserved repute. Indeed, there are few families that have for so long a time, and for such a continuance, given so many servants to the state. As early as the reign of Edward II., we find that John de Hotham, great grandson of the first of the name, who settled at the family seat of Hotham, Yorkshire, was Bishop of Ely, Treasurer of the Exchequer, and subsequently Lord Chancellor to Edward III. Sir John Hotham, the first baronet, Governor of Hull, who had five wives, was beheaded on Tower-hill, together with his son, Sir John Hotham, Knt., by the Parliamentarians, for corresponding with the Royalists, in 1643. His grandson and successor married into the noble family of Beaumont, in Ireland, and hence the Irish peerage, which the present Lord Hotham, member for the East-Riding of Yorkshire, and uncle of Sir Charles, retains, his lordship being a major-general in the army, and having served at Waterloo. Of the many naval officers in the family, both in direct descent and collaterally, the most celebrated was the Rt. Hon. William, Baron Hotham, of South Dalton, in the peerage of Ireland, so created 7th March, 1797, with remainder, in default of direct descendants, to the heirs male of his deceased father, in consideration of his gallant achievements, as a naval commander, at the commencement of hostilities with republican France. Having previously attained the rank of rear-admiral, he was advanced to that of admiral of the white, appointed second in command of the fleet ordered to the Mediterranean, under Lord Hood, of which he obtained the chief command a few months afterwards, upon Lord Hood’s return to England; and but a short time subsequently elapsed until Admiral Hotham had the good fortune to bring the French squadron to action (14th March, 1795), and to obtain a decisive victory over it, for which he received the thanks of both houses of parliament, and was made admiral of the blue. He died, unmarried, in 1813, and was succeeded by his brother Beaumont, Lord Hotham, father of the present Lord Hotham, M.P., and of the late Vice-Admiral Hotham, who was, consequently, uncle of the subject of the present sketch, of whom the annexed particulars are taken from the great nautical professional authority, ‘O’Byrne’s Naval Biography’:—
‘Sir Charles Hotham, born in 1806, is eldest son of the Rev. Fras. Hotham, Prebendary of Rochester (second son of the second Lord Hotham, one of the Barons of the Court of Exchequer), by Anne Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Thos. Hallett Hodges, Esq., of Hemsted Place, Kent; and first cousin of Capt. Hon. Geo. Fred. Hotham, R.N. Sir Charles, who is brother-in-law of Lieut.-Col. Grieve, of the 75th Regt., has also a brother, Augustus Thomas Hotham, in the army. This officer entered the navy 6 Nov., 1818; and on the night of the 23 May, 1824, when midshipman of the Naiad, 46, Captain Robert Cavendish Spencer, served in the boats under Lieut. Michael Quin at the gallant destruction of a 16-gun brig, moored in a position of extraordinary strength alongside the walls of the fortress of Bona, in which was a garrison of about 400 soldiers, who, from cannon and musket, kept up a tremendous fire, almost perpendicularly, on the deck. He was made lieutenant, 17 Sept., 1825, into the Revenge, 76, flag-ship of Sir Harry Burrard Neale in the Mediterranean; and next appointed—15 May, 1826, to the Medina, 20, Capts. Timothy Curtis and William Burnaby Greene, on the same station—and, 8 Dec. 1827, and 26 July, 1828, as first, to the Terror and Meteor bombs, Capts. Wm. Fletcher and David Hope. As a reward for his distinguished exertions on the occasion of the wreck of the Terror, Mr. Hotham was promoted by the Lord High Admiral to the rank of commander on the 13th of August, 1828. After an interval of half-pay he obtained an appointment on the 17th of March, 1830, to the Cordelia, 10, and returned to the Mediterranean, whence he ultimately came home and was paid off in October, 1833—having been raised to post-rank on 28 of the preceding June, in compliment to the memory of his uncle, the late Vice-Admiral Hon. Sir Henry Hotham, G.C.B., G.C.M.G. His next appointment was, 25 Nov., 1842, to the Gorgon steam-sloop, stationed on the S.E. coast of America. In Nov., 1845, having assumed command of a small squadron, he ascended the river Parana, in conjunction with a French naval force under Capt. Trèhouart, and on 20 of that month, after a hard day’s fighting, succeeded in effecting the destruction of four heavy batteries belonging to General Rosas at Punta Obligado, also of a schooner-of-war carrying 6 guns, and of 24 vessels chained across the river. Towards the close of the action he landed with 180 seamen and 145 marines, and accomplished the defeat of the enemy, whose numbers had originally consisted of at least 3,500 men, in cavalry, infantry, and artillery, and whose batteries had mounted 22 pieces of ordnance, including 10 brass guns, which latter were taken off to the ships, the remainder being all destroyed. The loss of the British in this very brilliant affair amounted to 9 men killed and 24 wounded. In acknowledgment of the gallantry, zeal, and ability displayed throughout its various details by Capt. Hotham, he was recommended in the most fervent terms of admiration by his Commander-in-Chief, Rear-Admiral S. Hood Inglefield, in his despatches to the Admiralty, and he was in consequence nominated a K.C.B. 9 March, 1846. Since 13 May in that year he has been employed as commodore on the coast of Africa, with his broad pennant successively flying in the Devastation and Penelope steamers. While Sir Chas. Hotham was in the Gorgon, that vessel was blown far on shore in a hurricane at Colonia, and it was only by the most indomitable and procrastinated exertion on the part of himself and his crew that she was saved.’