t, although they themselves are not members of the Board of Trade,
they shall not be allowed to negotiate and transfer them to persons
not having that quality. In the custom house nothing being admitted
unless the number of bales shipped are accompanied by corresponding
permits, and as it besides frequently happens that there is a degree
of competition between the parties seeking to try their fortune in
this way, the original holders of the permits very often hang back,
in such a manner that I have seen $500 offered for the transfer of
a right to ship three bales, which scarcely contained goods to the
amount of $1,000. Such, nevertheless, is the truth, and such the
exact description of the famous Acapulco ship, which has excited so
much jealousy among the merchants of Seville and Cadiz, and given
rise to such an infinite number of disputes and lawsuits.

[Business irregularities.] So complete a deviation from the rules
and maxims usually received in trade, could not fail to produce
in the Philippine Islands, as in fact it has, effects equally
extraordinary with regard to those who follow this pursuit. The
merchant of Manila is, in fact, entirely different from the one in
Cadiz or Amsterdam. Without any correspondents in the manufacturing
countries and consequently possessed of no suitable advices of the
favorable variations in the respective markets, without brokers and
even without regular books he seems to carry on his profession on
no one fixed principle, and to have acquired his routine of business
from mere habit and vague custom. His contracts are made out on stamped
paper, and his bills or promissory notes no other than long and diffuse
writings or bonds, of which the dates and amounts are kept more in
the shape of bundles than by any due entry on his books; and what at
once gives the most clear idea of this irregularity is the singular
fact that, for the space of twenty-five and possibly fifty years,
only one bankrupt has presented the state of his affairs to the Board
of Trade, in conformity to the regulations prescribed by the general
Statutes of Bankruptcy, whereas, numbers of cases have occurred in
which these merchants have wasted or secreted the property of others
with impunity. Hence have arisen those irregularities, subterfuges
and disputes, in a word, the absence of all mercantile business
carried on in a scrupulously punctual and correct manner. Hence, also,
have followed that distrust and embarrassmen