About the year 1817 an increased duty was laid on all foreign goods in the Black Sea; but at the same period Odessa was definitively declared to be a free port, without restriction. Things continued thus until 1822; and it was during this interval that all those great foreign houses were established in Odessa, some of which exist to this day. The commerce of Southern Russia had then reached its apogee. After the long wars of the French empire the agriculture of Europe was in a very depressed condition, and it was necessary to have recourse to Russia for the corn which other countries could not raise in sufficient quantity for their own subsistence. Odessa thus became, under the wise administration of the Duc de Richelieu, one of the most active commercial cities of eastern Europe; its population increased prodigiously; the habits induced by prosperity gave a new stimulus to its import trade, and every year hundreds of vessels entered its port to take in agricultural freights of all kinds.
Dazzled by this commercial prosperity, till then unexampled in Russia, and, doubtless believing it unalterably established, the government then chose to return to its prohibitive system, and, whether through ignorance or incapacity, the ministry deliberately ruined with their own hands the commercial wealth of Southern Russia. In 1822, at the moment when it was least expected, an ukase suppressed the freedom of the port of Odessa, and made it obligatory on the merchants to pay the duties on all goods then in the warehouses. This excited intense alarm, and as it was totally impossible to pay immediately such enormous duties as those imposed by the general tariff of the empire, the merchants remonstrated earnestly and threatened, all of them, to commit bankruptcy. The governor of the town, dismayed at the disasters which the enforcement of the law would occasion, took it on his own responsibility to delay; and commissioners were sent to St. Petersburg to acquaint the emperor with the state of commerce in Odessa. Alexander, whose intentions were always excellent, and who had no doubt been deceived by false reports, promptly annulled the ukase. The freedom of the port of Odessa was therefore re-established, but not to the same extent as before. Concessions were made to the board of customs, a fifth of the duties exacted in other Russian ports was imposed on goods entering Odessa, and the other four-fifths were to be paid on their departure for the interior. The limits of the free port were also considerably reduced, and two lines of custom-houses were formed, the one round the port, the other round the town. These lines still subsist.
The victories of the board of customs did not stop here, and new measures, suggested and supported no doubt by fraud, were put in force. We have spoken of the free transit traffic through the towns of Doubassar, Radzivilov, and Odessa. This traffic was increasing rapidly; all the merchants of western Asia were beginning to take the Odessa route to make their purchases in the great fairs of Germany. There was every probability that Odessa would be one of the principal points of arrival and exchange for all the produce of Europe and Asia. The Transcaucasian provinces enjoyed very extensive commercial freedom at this period by virtue of an ukase promulgated, October 20, 1821. Redoutkale, at the mouth of the Phasis, on the shores of Mingrelia, was then the port to which all the goods from Leipsic were conveyed by sea; from thence they passed to Tiflis and Erivan, and were then distributed over all the adjacent countries, through Turkey, Armenia, and even as far as Persia. The Armenians had secured this traffic almost exclusively to themselves. They appeared for the first time in Odessa in 1823. The next year they advanced as far as Leipsic, where they bought European manufactures to the amount of more than 600,000 francs; in 1825 their purchases rose to 1,200,000 francs, and in 1826 to 2,800,000. All these goods were conveyed by land to Odessa, and there embarked on the Black Sea for Redoutkaleh. It may easily be conceived what a happy influence such a traffic would have exercised over the agriculture and cattle rearing of Southern Russia, and eventually on the prosperity of the population engaged in this carrying trade. But all these promising elements of prosperity were to be annihilated by the narrow views of the minister of finance. The commercial franchise of the Caucasian provinces, after having lasted for ten years, was suddenly suppressed on the first of January, 1832. The most rigorous prohibitive system was put in force; Tiflis, the capital of Georgia, more than 220 miles from the Black Sea, was made the centre of the customs administration, and all goods destined for that part of Asia had to pass through that town to be examined there and pay duty.