MAURITIUS.

Southland Times, Issue 618, 14 January 1867, Page 3

MAURITIUS.

(From the Commercial Gfatcetie..) Mauritius, happly. is in a very satisfactory condition, and its finances have been aptly and truthfully described as elastic. That this is the case is due to the intelligence and perseverance of the community, and also, it must be said, to its well adapted system of government. We have a large balance of revenue in hand, which would now have been larger but that we have drawn on it to aid in the accomplishment of a great public work which, in the course of time, when its capacities and resources are fully developed, will probably become a source of revenue, while it will always be of the greatest utility and convenience to the public. Our general revenue is equal to our expenditure, and but for exceptional circumstances, such as the high price of grain, the extension of tobacco cultivation in the colony, and the combinations of distillers, would have exceeded the latter to some extent; and this, be it remembered, without the imposition of other than a nominal tax on exports of sugar and imports of rice, and reasonable j duties on the entry of other goods and merchandise required by the colony. Our latest correspondence from Madagascar announces that the authorities there have prohibited the exportation of rice from that island. We cannot expect that the Hovas, notwithstanding their desire to imitate Europeans, and their inclination to extend their commerce, can understand the principles of free trade to their fullest extent, especially as the same principles are not yet thoroughly recognised and adopted in countries more intimately connected with the commerce of the world, and in a higher state of civilisation, than Madagascar. The continued dry weather, albeit very convenient for the cutting of canes and the manipulatiou of sugar, is beginning I to be regarded as more than menancing the plantations for the ensuing year, and complaints have reached us from more than one quarter that the young canes are decidedly suffering, if indeed their healthy growth has not been irrevocably checked. This is but a sad prospect for the colony, struggling against a gigantic rival industry, oppressed by a scale of duties which shuts out a part of its produce from the European markets, obliged to pay wages to laborers out of proporton to the profits derived therefrom, and to purchase all kinds of provisions at extravagantly high prices.