12 ROTTERDAM.

creased tax on patents; or, as we should call them, licences to carry on trade or manufactures, which all must take out, and which are rated, not as under our late income tax accord- ing to the net profits, but according to the amount of the business, whether profitable or the contrary.

The enforcement of the ancient navigation law, which pro- hibited a citizen of Holland from owning a foreign built ship, is a subject of much complaint; and has been found hitherto of no benefit to their own ship-builders, whose trade was represented to me as in a state of complete stagnation.

Above all the other complaints of the Rotterdam merchants, the loudest is against some new duties on coffee, the passing of which, from one dealer to another, is placed by the same law, under some severe regulations resembling our excise system. these complaints, however, they all unite in ascribing to their monarch the best intentions; but are most vehement in their expressions of wrath against the minister Alopeus, who is accused of being the author of the extension of the excise laws to coffee, and who was, lately, first insulted and afterwards expelled from the public gardens of this city, by the whole of the company, who were by no means of the lower class of the people. They all confess that this minister possesses talents, and some allow him integrity; but, having been formed in the school of Buonaparte, who was him- self ignorant of the interests of commerce, he 1s accused of having imbibed maxims which, however plausible in theory, are either impracticable, or, if reducible to practice, become highly injurious. Such are the views of the merchants here; perhaps an acquaintance with the landholders of Bel- gium might lead to very different, if not opposite views of the subject.