Office of the Secretary of the Treasury and Public Credit., October 30, 1871
Office of the Secretary of the Treasury and Public Credit.
The federal executive has declared, in different resolutions and circulars, according to their attributions, and through their obligations to enforce the laws, that no fiscal duties nor loans of value paid to the insurgents may furnish the pretext for liberating those having the cause from their pecuniary obligations toward the legitimate authorities.
In consequence of this principle, the President has decreed to advise the customhouses and-respective chiefs of the treasury department, and that there should, be circulated for the knowledge of all the public functionaries and of the inhabitants of the nation in general, that the dispositions taken by the chief of the insurgent forces in Nuevo Leon respecting commerce, frontier dues, and cessation of custom-guards, being, as they are, null and of no legal effect, all merchandise which enters through said frontier remains subject to the payment of the general frontier dues now in force, which duties the federal agents, either civil or military, may demand whenever met with, if such merchandise passes the points where the insurrectionists are to be found, and in any time immediately after the re-establishment of the law, the constituted authorities taking notice of fraud.
The President has also been pleased to decree, in order to avoid that contraband should destroy legitimate commerce, that no cargo of foreign goods shall pass from Nuevo Leon to the interior without express permission given in writing by this secretary’s office, which is to contain the circumstances respecting the proceeding, payment of duties, and qualities of the goods, which shall be communicated to the military chief of the respective line for his knowledge, as also to the employé which this office may place in commission to inspect the execution of that which has been determined, in the conception that any introduction of goods that may proceed from any point eccupied by the revolutionists, without the requisites before pointed out, shall be considered fraudulent, applying to it, in consequence, the punishments pointed out by the law in such cases, and keeping especially in view the articles 63 and 64 of the rules of the frontier custom-houses of the 4th of June, 1870.