The British merchants also labour under some inconvenience, originating in the misconstruction of or non-compliance with the actual intent of the convention for regulating the levying of the fifteen per cent. duty upon that portion of English goods not embraced by the _pauta_, and which latter instrument is additionally and injuriously partial in its operations, not being a fair standard by which the real value of the article the duty is to be paid upon can be designated. The avowed object between the two governments in this arrangement is, that the British merchant shall pay a duty of fifteen per cent. upon the fair value of the thing imported; but the _pauta_ enumerates a fixed value upon certain articles, without reference to the fluctuation of price, and the tide having uniformly of late years flowed downwards in this respect, goods have experienced a diminution from the average valuation of that instrument, consequently, the duty may amount to twenty-five or thirty per cent. in place of fifteen, upon their actual worth. But this is not the only objection to it as an inefficient medium for levying the duties. The _pauta_ determines the value of certain goods at one, two, or three prices, at the same time that a great variety of qualities exist in the same commodity, which gradations of value are yearly increasing, by the introduction of mechanical power and other improvements into our manufactures. Some printed cottons are worth upwards of two shillings per yard, others nine-pence or one shilling, with intermediate qualities. Cambric muslins bear greater disproportions of quality, yet the duties are exacted upon goods of this kind, worth one shilling per yard, at the same rate as those bearing twice the value. At Rio, where more fine goods are used, they pay the same duty as the merchants of Bahia and Pernambuco, where more of the lower quality of the same articles are imported; and, in consequence, the merchants of the latter place have been entirely precluded, during the last eighteen months, from despatching through the custom-house printed cottons and muslins of a low price, as the valuation they hold in the _pauta_ would have made the duty forty per cent. upon their real worth in lieu of fifteen per cent. Mr. Lempriere, the consul of Pernambuco, did not conceive it his duty to interfere in the matter; but it would appear that the captain-general and the judge of the custom-house, were either influenced by the diminution of customs collected, or by the representations of the merchants themselves, to accede to an arbitration. Messrs. Cockshott, Mitchel, and Todd, three very competent and highly-respectable merchants, were selected, on the part of the English, to meet three Portuguese merchants; and, in the month of January, 1820, during my stay at Pernambuco, the matter was, for the time being, amicably adjusted; but the nature of the _pauta_ will ever present great difficulties, and can never embrace the intended