Note XXXIII-70 — Chapter XXXIII · COMMERCE AND FINANCE. 1801-1887.

The commercial tax was not to be more than double that assessed in 1885. The general govt on the 1st of April, 1885, established a salt monopoly, and in the same year decreed the reëstablishment of custom-houses at the Isthmus ports. This decree was subsequently suspended. La Estrella de Pan., May 16, 1885; Pan. Star and Herald, Nov. 2, 4, Dec. 30, 1885. The budgets for the ten years from 1867 to 1876 amounted together to $3,018,391, and the appropriations voted for the same year were $3,335,084. The absence of regular accounts for the period 1867-75 renders it impossible to find out what were the actual receipts and expenditures. The revenue from Jan. 1, 1876, to June 30, 1877, was $339,526, and the expenses reached $356,483, though only $274,298 were paid. The revenue collected from July 1, 1877, to June 30, 1878, $218,095; the assembly voted for expenses of that fiscal year $382,841, but the government seems to have paid out only $226,278. For 1880-1 the legislature computed the revenue at $300,628. It had the preceding year authorized the executive to increase the commercial tax 25 per cent. The expenditures for the year were estimated at $316,077. Pan., Mem. Sec. Jen., 1878, 43-6, 48; 1879, 3, 32-3; Id., Leyes, 1879-80, 8, 9, 64-78.