PROTECTION OF TRADE.

[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.