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abolition of duties which are a burden to industry, such as
the 4 millions, or 11 per cent., paid on metals, as well
as the 2½ millions, or 7 per cent., paid on machines
and implements. There is nothing to hinder the
abolition of the 1 per cent. brought in by a duty on
meat and pork, or the duty on textiles (yarns and
cloths amounting altogether to 5 millions, or 8 per
cent., made up of 6 per cent. on piece goods and 2
per cent. on thread and yarn). Part of these duties
help considerably to give the manufactures of the
country a wrong direction, though it is true that
duties on silk, velvet, and other high-priced textiles
which are not at present manufactured in the country,
as well as the duty on Paris articles, are not protective.
They, too, however, are the cause of difficulties, delay,
and cost in the custom-houses, and for purely practical
reasons they ought to be entirely abolished. It is
only by limiting the collection to a very few articles of
financial importance that it becomes possible to avoid
arbitrary treatment, and to simplify materially the
custom-house administration. We will not here refer
to such articles as meat and pork, fish and maize,
which certainly ought not, as at present, to be taxed
when imported from other countries than Russia. In
Finland there is no serious hindrance to the
introduction of an almost ideal system of taxation. By
only taxing a few articles of considerable financial
value, the foreign commerce, which is of such enormous
importance to this northern country with its one-sided
economic conditions, might be greatly developed.
There is no financial necessity whatever to misdirect
economic forces or to diminish the consumption of
useful articles. The tariff of Finland is many times
better, for instance, than that of Russia or even than
that of France, Germany, and Sweden, so far as it
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