The custom-houses offer well-nigh the only sources of revenue in Santo Domingo, and the different revolutions usually have as their real aim the obtaining possession of these custom-houses. The mere fact that we are protecting the custom-houses and collecting the revenue with efficiency and honesty has completely discouraged all revolutionary movement, while it has already produced such an increase in the revenues that the Government is actually getting more from the forty-five per cent that we turn over to it than it got formerly when it took the entire revenue. This is enabling the poor harrassed people of Santo Domingo once more to turn their attention to industry and to be free from the curse of interminable revolutionary disturbance. It offers to all bona fide creditors, American and European, the only really good chance to obtain that to which they are justly entitled, while it in return gives to Santo Domingo the only opportunity of defense against claims which it ought not to pay――for now if it meets the views of the Senate we shall ourselves thoroughly examine all these claims, whether American or foreign, and see that none that are improper are paid. Indeed, the only effective opposition to the treaty will probably come from dishonest creditors, foreign and American, and from the professional revolutionists of the island itself. We have already good reason to believe that some of the creditors who do not dare expose their claims to honest scrutiny are endeavoring to stir up sedition in the island, and are also endeavoring to stir up opposition to the treaty both in Santo Domingo and here, trusting that in one place or the other it may be possible to secure either the rejection of the treaty or else its amendment in such fashion as to be tantamount to rejection.