Office of the Historian

No. 501.
Mr. Foster to Mr. Frelinghuysen.

[Extract.]
Legation of the United States,
Madrid, July 31, 1883. (Received August 18.)
No. 50.]

Sir: The Official Gazette of the 28th instant contains the appropriation law for the island of Cuba for the fiscal year 1883–’84, recently passed by the Spanish Cortes, of which a copy is transmitted.

The total expenses are fixed at $34,170,880, and the receipts are estimated at $34,269,410.

The legal provisions which are a part of the act contain some matters which may be of interest to American commerce with that island. Article V provides that from the 1st instant the additional charge of 10 per cent, on export duties will be reduced one-half.

The export duties on tobacco raised in the central and eastern departments will be lowered 30 per cent, on the present tax. From the date of the publication of the law (the 28th) the bills of the bank of the island of Cuba will be admitted at their full nominal value in payment of 10 per cent, of the import custom-house duties.

The two following articles are of special interest:

  • Article XII. The Government will negotiate treaties of commerce which it may deem necessary to lower, proportionately, the tariff duties on foreign products in reciprocity with those which the island pays in the respective countries, always taking into account the interests of national production.
  • Article XIII. The Government will, if experience so warrant it, reform the regulations by which the customs are exacted, taking care to concrete in precise and simple rules the formalities to which the importation and exportation of fruits and merchandise, and commerce in transit and coasting trade are subject, procuring harmony and similarity with those of the Peninsula, in order to conform to the legislative formalities which the laws prescribe.

It would seem that by the latter article the Government, through the minister of ultramar, possesses the power to make the modification in the customs regulations which our Government has so earnestly desired. I will improve the earliest opportunity to ask the Spanish Government to exercise its power under this law.* * *

The Official Gazette of the 29th instant announces the acceptance of the resignation of the present governor-general of Cuba and the appointment to that important post of Lieutenant-General Ignacio Maria del Castillo, now captain-general of the province of Madrid (New Castile).

I am, &c.,

JOHN W. FOSTER.