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1st. Public debt and indorsements-that is to say, civil list of the sovereign, indemnity for the senate and corps legislatif, civil and military pensions, sinking fund, 590,000,000 francs.

The consolidated debt-that is to say, the interest payable by the statefigures in this total only 327,000,000 francs; but to the stock properly so called should be added other annual payments to be made under different names-floating debts, life annuities, special loans, interest on securities, &c. The real sum total of interest payable exceeds at present 400,000,000 francs; and since the conversion of the 4 into 3 per cent. funds effected last year, an operation which has increased the nominal capital of the debt, this capital actually exceeds 12,000,000,000 francs.

2d. Service of the nine ministerial departments, 327,000,000 francs. This total comprises more than 18,000,000 francs for prisons, and less than 8,000,000 francs for public institutions.

3d. Army and navy, 483,000,000 francs. The effective force assumed to be 400,000 men, 86,000 horses, 188 armed ships, and 30,000 sailors; but, in reality, this sum total is always far exceeded. The excess of expenses is provided for by supplementary credits legalized in the succeeding year.

4th. Expenses of administration and collection of taxes and revenue, 233,451,000 francs. I shall recur to this article further on.

5th. Budget extraordinary, so called, devoted generally to works of general utility, 108,000,000 francs.

6th. Special budget, 222,000,000 francs. This budget comprises local expenses voted by the department, and commences for their proper use. The state receives the sums voted with the ordinary taxes, and transmits the funds to the localities which have voted them. This collection is quite independent of the octroi duties levied at the gates of cities.

II. RECEIPTS.

The nominal total of receipts, as well ordinary as extra

ordinary.

But there must be deducted from this.

Furnished for the sinking fund, and, moreover...

2, 110, 237, 000 frs. 177, 005, 000

1, 933, 232, 000
27, 500, 000

1,905, 732, 000 fre.

and a half, proceeding from the returns of the government forests and other contingent resources.

There remains then, as receipts proceeding from taxation, 1,806,000,000 francs.

These receipts are derived from the following resources :

1st. Direct contributions, comprising the land tax, tax upon houses, upon windows and doors, contributions upon personal effects and chattels, licenses and tax upon horses and carriages. This source affords 507,552,000 francs. The mechanism of this contribution, the manner in which it is increased by additional centimes, is a curious matter to understand.

2d. Registration of stamps, 410,000,000. Every kind of negotiation, sale or purchase of real estate, donation or testament, contract of marriage, judicial acts, bills of exchange, journals, &c., are registered or require the use of stamped papers, with tax proportioned to the sums negotiated. The imperial government, in increasing the tariffs and vigorously and rigorously collecting the taxes, has found means of compelling the registry of very considerable sums, but weighing heavily on business.

3d. Domains and forests, 54,000,000 francs. This sum, proceeding from the cutting of wood or sales of land, is not, properly speaking, a tax.

4th. Customs, not comprising salt and sugar, 88,000,000 francs. Since the commercial reform a great part of the protective duties have been abandoned, which has diminished the sum total.

5th. Salt, at the rate of 12 centimes per kilo, 34,000,000 francs. A part of this tax is appropriated to the service of the custom-house, and a part to the administration of indirect or excise taxes.

6th. Sugars, foreign, colonial, and domestic, 135,000,000 francs, at the rate of 42 centimes per kilo. Upon imported sugar the tax is collected by the custom-house service; for the domestic, by the indirect taxes service. The legislation in regard to sugar is under revision at the present time.

7th. Tax upon beverages, 204,000,000 francs, is very badly apportioned, and ought to be much more productive.

8th. Tobacco, (its manufacture and sale are monopolized by the state,) 221,000,000. This revenue is always on the increase.

6th. Postage, 69,000,000.

10th. Proceeds from various and contingent sources, monopoly of powder, Algerian revenue, proceeds of private telegraphing, &c., &c., 160,000,000 francs. 11th. Extraordinary receipts, destined for public works called extraordinary, the same corresponding with article 5th of expenses.

12th. Special receipts for the departments and communes, sums corresponding with article 6 of expenses.

III. EXPENSES OF COLLECTING TAXES AND REVENUES.

There are special administrations with regiments of employés for each kind of tax. For the observations to which this system would give rise there is no place here. I shall merely indicate results.

Table showing a consolidated statement of the revenue of France as voted for the year 1864, with cost of collecting the same.

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To these different categories of taxes may be added the octroi-that is to say, the taxes collected at the gates of the towns, and for their benefit, upon the principal objects of consumption. The sum total of the proceeds of the octroi is about 160,000,000 francs, and Paris derives from this source nearly 100,000,000. There are special agents for the collection of the octroi duties.

JANUARY 9, 1864.

I have already acknowledged the receipt of despatch No. 95, from the State Department, relating to an alleged practice at the French custom-houses of opening each individual package of preserved fruits to the serious detriment of that branch of American commerce. I availed myself of the first convenient opportunity to bring the subject to the notice of M. Masserron, who is head of the bureau primarily charged with this class of reclamations, and he expressed great surprise at the allegation. He wished to know if I could inform him of any ports in which packages of preserves had been thus indiscriminately opened. I was obliged to admit that I had no information in regard to any specific case. He then stated the practice of the customs to be as follows: The consignor deposits his declaration or invoice at the custom-house. The verificateur, as he is called, whose duty it is to see that the invoice and the property correspond, designates certain packages, at his discretion, to be opened, and if he sees no ground for suspicion, the rest are allowed to pass without further trouble. If, however, the verifier finds the declaration false in any respect, he is at liberty to open every package of course.

To enable the central administration here to obtain the necessary explanations from its agents, and to enforce a more correct interpretation of the custom-house regulations, if they are liable to be departed from, M. Massaron wishes to be furnished with the details of the specific grievances, such as quantities, times, ports, &c., and he engages that we shall have the business regulated at once if there is any need of further regulation.

I will conclude by expressing my conviction that if there have been any departures here from the usage as stated by M. Massaron, the cases have been rare and altogether exceptional.

JANUARY 22, 1864.

I herewith submit what I believe to be the first statement ever made of the commercial movements from this consular district to the United States having any pretensions to completeness and accuracy.

I have owed the ability to make it mainly to the provisions of the act of the last Congress requiring a copy of each invoice to be filed with the consul who verifies it. These invoices embrace the amount and declared value of every article that has gone to the United States as merchandise since the act went into full operation, on the 1st of July last, a period of six months. It is from this source I have drawn the results I am about to communicate:

I find that the declared value of all merchandise shipped from this consular district between the 1st of July, 1863, and the 1st of January, 1864, exclusive of Champagne wines, amounts to..

And the declared value of Champagne wines, as exported for the same period, amounts to...

Making a total of...

54, 310, 423f.

3, 215, 445

57, 525, 868

which, at the rate of 5 francs to the dollar, amounts to $11, 505, 1733.

A little over half of this amount is made up of dry goods, and about a quarter of what are commonly termed fancy goods.

Statement showing the declared values in francs of the exports of glassware and porcelain ware for each of the several months constituting the last half of the year 1863.

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Tabular statement showing the value in francs of the shipment of merchandise from the consular district of Paris in each of the last six months of the year 1863 to the United States.

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With a similar analysis of the invoices deposited with all the consuls in France it would be easy to arrive at much more accurate notions of the value of our` present commerce with this empire than generally prevails here or elsewhere. It is to be regretted that the act which furnished these statistical resources had not been in operation for at least a short period previous to the rebellion, that we might have had the means of demonstrating what I have no doubt would prove to be the fact, that France has never sold so largely to the United States as during the six months just closed, and that the losses which her manufactaring industry has sustained from the recent privation of cotton have not been without their compensations.

that

I feel that I should convey an incorrect impression of the real value of the exports of France to the United States if I left the department to suppose the value stated in the invoices deserves to be regarded in all cases as the real value of the shipment. With some honorable exceptions, and these I am happy to say are from among the largest exporters, I have found it impossible to resist the evidence which has been produced to me, showing that a very large proportion of the goods shipped from France, I may say from every part of Europe, is invoiced at a gross undervaluation.

I will illustrate what may be regarded as the prevailing practice throughout Europe by what has been going on for years in a particular department of com

merce in this district.

*

*

It is the prevalent opinion, I believe, in the United States that all the genuine Champagne wine manufactured in France does not exceed three or four hundred thousand bottles, and hence that a large proportion of what is sold as such in

H. Ex Doc. 41-10

America is spurious, and mainly of domestic manufacture. Such persons will be surprised to learn that from my consular district alone (and large quantities are shipped from other parts of France) 1,266,897 bottles of Champagne were exported to the United States during the last six months. The invoice price of this wine, including bottles, corks, packages, commissions, inland freight, and charges to tide-water, was 3,215,445 francs. The market value of this wine at wholesale, and duty paid in the city of New York, was 9,642,862 francs.

* I have the data which enables me to certify with entire confidence that the difference between the declared value and the real value of the Champagne thus shipped from this district between the months of July and December last, inclusive, is moderately stated at 2,030,970 francs. Supposing the shipments for the next six months to be as much-they ought to be more, I am told, according to the usual course of trade-these figures express precisely the loss in revenue, the duty on Champagne being fifty per cent., which the government is exposed to sustain from this source the current year through a system of false invoicing which is generally practiced, and which our government has endured for an indefinite number of years. * * It is proper here to say that manufacturers of Champagne pretend as a justification of their system of invoicing that they give precisely the cost of the wine to them; that they sell none in the neighborhood of Rhemes, where it is invoiced, but ship it to their own agents all over the world, who sell it at what price they can get, and that consequently it has no market price at the place of shipment.

*

As I have already stated, my ability to furnish the statistics contained in the preceding pages I owe entirely to the provisions of the act of Congress requiring a copy of the invoices to be filed with the consul who verifies them. Whatever value those statistics possess would be greatly increased by a similar, or better still, if a complete return were made from all consulates. We should then know precisely of what the imports of the country consist.

*

HAVRE-JAMES O. PUTNAM, Consul.

JANUARY 17, 1863.

I have the honor to enclose herewith schedules of statistics relative to the commerce of Havre for the year 1862, and comparative tables of cotton importation into France. The culture of cotton in France is attracting some attention. From the "Nation," (Paris,) of the 8th January instant, I translate the following extract:

"The government has not lost sight of the efforts to acclimate cotton in France. These efforts are continued in some of the departments of the interior. Everything promises favorably. If the happy anticipations are realized, it will not be from our Algerian colonies alone that we shall obtain supplies of cotton, but also from some of our own departments, who will find their advantage in uniting the culture of cotton with that of the silk worm."

The present price of cotton is about sixty cents per pound for "middling." Three French ships have cleared during the year for New Orleans with my license. Six thousand six hundred and eighty-one emigrants have embarked at Havre for New York during the year.

Statement showing the imports into the port of Havre from the United States during the quarter ended December 31, 1862.

Cotton.-1,548 bales. (Remark.-The number of bales imported into Havre during the quarter from countries other than the United States, 56,373 bales.)

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