The increase of the agricultural prosperity of the island of Cuba and the influence of the accumulation of wealth on the value of importations, have raised the public revenue in these latter years to four millions and a half, perhaps five millions of piastres. The custom-house of the Havannah, which before 1794 yielded less than 600,000 piastres, and from 1797 to 1800, 1,900,000 piastres, pours into the treasury, since the declaration of free trade, a revenue (importe liquido) of more than 3,100,000 piastres.* (* The custom-house of Port-au-Prince, at Hayti, produced in 1825, the sum of 1,655,764 piastres; that of Buenos Ayres, from 1819 to 1821, average year, 1,655,000 piastres. See Centinela de La Plata, September 1822 Number 8; Argos de Buenos Ayres Number 85.) The island of Cuba as yet contains only one forty-second part of the population of France; and one half of its inhabitants, being in the most abject indigence, consume but little. Its revenue is nearly equal to that of the Republic of Columbia, and it exceeds the revenue of all the custom-houses of the United States* before the year 1795, when that confederation had 4,500,000 inhabitants, while the island of Cuba contained only 715,000. (* The custom-houses of the United States, which yielded in 1801 to 1808 sixteen millions of dollars, produced in 1815 but 7,282,000.) The principal source of the public revenue of this fine colony is the custom-house, which alone produces above three-fifths, and amply suffices for all the wants of the internal administration and military defence. If in these latter years, the expense of the general treasury of the Havannah amounted to more than four millions of piastres, this increase of expense is solely owing to the obstinate struggle maintained between the mother country and her freed colonies. Two millions of piastres were employed to pay the land and sea forces which poured back from the American continent, by the Havannah, on their way to the Peninsula. As long as Spain, unmindful of her real interests, refuses to recognize the independence of the New Republics, the island of Cuba, menaced by Columbia and the Mexican Confederation, must support a military force for its external defence, which ruins the colonial finances. The Spanish naval force stationed in the port of the Havannah generally costs above 650,000 piastres. The land forces require nearly one million and a half of piastres. Such a state of things cannot last indefinitely if the Peninsula do not relieve the burden that presses upon the colony. From 1789 to 1797 the produce of the custom-house at the Havannah never rose to more than 700,000 piastres. In 1814 it was 1,855,117. From 1815 to 1819 the royal taxes in the port of the Havannah amounted to 11,575,460 piastres; total 18,284,807 piastres; or, average year, 3,657,000 piastres, of which the municipal taxes formed 0.36. The public revenue of the Administracion general de Rentas of the jurisdiction of Havannah amounted: