the coast,[74]
the treasury chest was empty, and the Government officers and troops
were reduced to a very small portion of their pay.

The total revenues of the island, including the old-established taxes
and contributions, produced 70,000 pesos, and half of that sum was
never recovered on account of the abuses and dishonesty that had been
introduced in the system of collection.

An intendancy was deemed necessary, and the Home Government appointed
Alexander Ramirez to the post in February, 1813. He promptly
introduced important reforms in the administration, and caused regular
accounts to be kept. He made ample and liberal concessions to
commerce, opened five additional ports with custom-houses, freed
agriculture from the trammels that had impeded its development, and
placed labor, instruments, seeds, and modern machinery within its
reach. He printed and distributed short essays or manuals on the
cultivation of different products and the systems adopted by other
nations, promoted the immigration of Canary Islanders, founded the
Royal Economic Society of Friends of the Country, and edited the
Diario Economico de Puerto Rico, the first number of which appeared
February 28, 1814.

The first year after the establishment of these improvements,
notwithstanding the abolition of some of the most onerous taxes, the
revenues of the capital rose to $161,000, and the new custom-houses
produced $242,842.

Having placed this island's financial administration on a sound basis,
Ramirez was called upon by the Government to perform the same valuable
services for Cuba. Unfortunately, his successors here soon destroyed
the good effects of his measures by continual variations in the
system, and in the commercial tariffs. They attempted to prevent
smuggling by increasing the duties, the very means of encouraging
contraband trade, and the old mismanagement and malversations in the
custom-houses revived. One intendant, often from a mere spirit of
innovation, applied to the court for a decree canceling the
regulations of his predecessor, so that, from the concurring effects
of contraband and mismanagement, commerce suffered, and the country
became once more impoverished.

The revenues fell so low and the malversation of public money reached
such a height that the captain-general found it necessary in 1825 to
charge the military commanders of the respective districts with the
prevention of smuggling. He placed supervisors of known inte