The cities will soon be all right again, and under honest municipal government, taxes on urban property will be paid. The influx of commodities of all sorts, to make up for losses and destruction by war and low stocks due to the blockade, will increase the custom-house receipts. The reduction of duties on machinery and railway supplies may increase the importations of these articles, and thus the lower rates of duty will yield a revenue which the present high rates, by making importations impossible, fail to do. By putting an end to smuggling, and by honestly administering the custom-houses, the United States Government may increase the revenue, but the proposed reduction of duties of the amended tariff in a measure offsets this. Unless, therefore, some new source of revenue is found practicable (and the Spanish seem to have exhausted all known means of raising revenue), reliance for the future will have to be on five of the six revenue sources above enumerated. If for the first year or two they should yield in all $15,000,000, it will probably be all the revenue that may safely be estimated. Much will naturally depend upon the foreign imports. The cable despatches from Havana, as this volume goes to press, indicate that the customs revenue will be fully up to the author's estimates. Aside from special imports, such as specie, leaf tobacco, etc., the value of the imports of merchandise proper into Cuba the last normal year (1895) was upward of $60,000,000. An average tariff rate of twenty-five per cent. on this valuation of imported merchandise would itself yield $15,000,000. As a matter of fact, the duties collected in 1895 were $14,587,920.57, on a total importation of merchandise other than specie of $61,443,334.65, or about an average of twenty-five per cent. To be sure, the nominal tariff rates were much higher in 1895 than they will be in 1899, but there is a possibility of making up for the loss by reason of lower duties by abolishing smuggling and honestly administering the custom-houses. It is impossible, however, to estimate on this, because, to do so with any degree of success, it would be necessary to reduce to figures the losses of revenue by smuggling, undervaluation, and misclassification. This is an impossibility.