SPEECH P OF MR. WM. C. RIVES, OF VIRGINIA ON MR. McDUFFIE’S PROPOSITION '■ TO REPEAL THE TARIFF ACT OF 1842. DELIVERED IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, MONDAY, MAY 27, 1844. WASHINGTON: J. A3TD 6^ S. GIDSOK, PIlIKTJlllS. 1844. IX h 0 T d £ 3 23 la >08 c™ mCTn> . Mr. RIVES said he had hitherto abstained from taking anv part in this debate, because he preferred being a listener to the able and instructive arguments of other gentlemen,, rather than to obtrude, with an anxiety disproportioned to its importance, any thing he might have to say, on the attention of the Senate. And he begged the Senate to believe that he did not now rise to enter into any formal or systematic discussion of the subject which had so long occupied its attention. A large majority of the Senate, he had no doubt, had long since come to the conclusion that the bill of the honorable Senator from South Carolina, (Mr. McDuffie,) is, within the true meaning of the Constitution, a “ bill for raising revenue,” and that it cannot, therefore, properly originate in this branch of the Legislature. But, as by general acquiescence and consent, it has been entertained as a theme for discussing a great question of national policy, deeply affecting the interests and feelings of every portion of the Union, he desired, before the vote of the Senate was taken upon it, to state, as briefly as he could, the views he entertained on some of the ^ questions which have been drawn into discussion. In doing so, said Mr. R., I shall pass by all topics of a secondary character, and ad¬ dress myself at once to those leading and general principles which must control, with decisive force, the policy of the Government in regard to the 'great interests of national industry, as they are affected by systems of public revenue. A primary and essential element in the solution of this vexed question of national policy is involved in the pre¬ liminary enquiry, what is the best mode, upon principles purely financial , of raising the necessary revenue for the support of Government? I had supposed that this was a ques¬ tion hardly open to any serious difference of opinion. The suggestions we have seen from time to time, in the discussions of the press and elsewhere, in favor of a recurrence to a system of direct taxation, I had regarded as the harmless vagaries of individual specu¬ lative opinion. But, when we hear gentlemen of the authority and experience in ques¬ tions of finance, of the Senator from New Hampshire, (Mr. Woodbury,) and of the en¬ lightened views of the Senator from South Carolina, (Mr. McDuffie,) gravely declaring their opinions as practical legislators and statesmen, in favor of substituting, to a certain extent and under certain qualifications, a resort to direct taxes and excises for the present easy and almost imperceptible mode of supplying the public Treasury, the subject chal¬ lenges investigation and enquiry at the threshold. The Senator from New Hampshire says, if therequisite amount of revenue is not yielded by imposts within a given limit, to wit, 20 or 25 per cent., which he denominates, (rather arbitrarily I must be permitted to say,) the revenue standard , then we should have recourse, as was done in 1794 and 1798, to di¬ rect taxes and excises for the residue of what is wanted for the support of the Govern¬ ment, rather than to exceed that limit. And the Senator from South Carolina, complain¬ ing that the weight of taxation is borne, in too great a proportion by foreign imports, contends that it would be more equitable and just to divide the burden between foreign and domestic manufactures, subjecting the latter to an excise duty equivalent to the im¬ post duty levied upon the former. [Here the two Senators explained. Mr. Rives resumed. If the gentlemen will refer to their printed speeches, they will find that I have, in no degree, overstated their respective propositions, by which, I must confess, I was not a little startled, when they were first announced on the floor. I had supposed that, if any thing had been conclusively settled by the most approved writers on finance and political economy, as well as by the experience of all modern govern¬ ments, especially our own, it was this—that the least onerous and the |east objection- 4 abl e of all the modes of providing for the support of Government, and the exigencies of the public service, is by taxes on consumption ; and that of taxes on consumption, those most consistent with the genius and policy of free States, are taxes on foreign imports. 1 he considerations which recommend them are almost too obvious to justify a repetition th em to the Senate. In the first place, they are voluntary. No man pays them who is not both willing and able to pay them, or, in other words, who does not choose to purchase the articles on which they are levied. In this respect, they are favorably dis¬ tinguished from direct taxes, or taxes on possessions , (as the latter are sometimes de¬ nominated,) from which there is no escape, “ being destiny unshunnable as death.” 1 hese taxes on the consumption of foreign goods are, moreover, for the most part, the most equal kind of impositions, being generally paid according to the wealth and ability of the contributors. The consumption, or, speaking in a more general and proper sense, me expense of individuals, is, ordinarily, in proportion to iheir means of consumption or ability to purchase ; and the amount of the tax paid by each individual in this mode being exactly regulated by his consumption or expense, the tax apportions itself, very fair }y in the ™ ai ?» t0 the wealth and ability of the tax payers. If any person finds him¬ self burdened with a larger portion of the public contributions, through this channel, than he can well afford to pay, he has only to retrench his expenses, and he diminishes, at the same moment and by the same act, the amount of tax he pays. A motive is thus furnished to economy , the habit of which is so essential to the accumulation of capital and the steady progress of national wealth. These taxes are, also, the least burden¬ some, because, instead of being paid in advance, and all at once, as other taxes are, they are paid by piece-meal only, as the articles on which they are levied are required for actual use and consumption; and being then merged in and confounded with the price of the article, they are hardly felt as a public burden at all. There are political considerations of no less importance which recommend them. The machinery and process of their collection are infinitely more simple, and attended with far less of vexation and expense, than those which belong to other systems of revenue. There is no harassing domiciliary visitation, no annoying inquisitorial ex¬ aminations into every man’s private affairs, to reach the objects of them. At a few p oints upon the seaboard, through the agency of a small number of custom-houses, you collect a revenue of twenty, or twenty-five, or thirty millions of dollars, with the utmost ease and convenience, instead of overspreading the land with a cloud of tax-gatherers, like the locusts of Egypt, eating out the substance of the people—the usual and unavoidable attendant of every system of internal taxation. The excessive multiplication of offices, and the consequent extension of Executive patronage, the bane of public liberty, and the canker of the Treasury, are thus avoided ; and, in the same proportion, the expenses of collection are diminished. The first report of Mr. Gallatin as Secretary of the Treasury, made in 1801, shows that the expense of collecting the various internal taxes, which existed under .the preceding administration, was equivalent to 20 per cent., while that of collecting the customs was but 4 per cent. There is a further consideration of great importance, under our particular political system, in favor of supplying the Federal Treasury by external duties. It is the General Government only which is endowed with the power of raisins revenue from the foreign commerce of the country. The States are thrown exclusively •on the resources of internal taxation for their support. We should never therefore cre¬ ate a surcharge on those resources, by encroaching on the domain of State taxation, but in cases of inevitable necessity. The honorable Senator from New Hampshire, (Mr. Woodbury,) was unfortunate, I thought, Mr. President, in referring us to the financial examples of 1794 and 1798, for imitation. Those, I had supposed, were examples for avoidance, not for imitation. Are the monitory lessons of the past lost so soon in oblivion. Has the honorable Senator forgot the whiskey insurrection—a popular rebellion produced by the odium of an excise tax—a sentiment so deep and strong that not even the reverence for the character and person of General Washington, then at the head of the Government, cquld prevent it from breaking out into open resistance to the authority and execution of the law? Has the honorable Sen- o ator forgotten the odium produced by the direct tax of Mr. Adams in 1798, which for the paltry sum of two millions of dollars, covered the land with a host of revenue officer 8 , assessors, inspectors, supervisors, commissioners, and collectors? Has he forgotten the moral resistance awakened in the minds of the people by the carnage tax , the stamp tax , and the other fiscal expedients of that discredited era of internal taxation—measures which, we have the authority of the most enlightened contemporary observers ior say¬ ing, contributed even more than the alien and sedition laws, to overwhelm that ill-tateU administration with popular disgrace? .... , r . , , . , , • i, t i. p I had supposed there were examples in our political and financial history which the honorable Senator from New Hampshire, distinguished discip'e as he is of the democratic school, would have preferred looking back to for instruction. I had supposed he would have preferred deriving his lessons from the great “Civil Revolution of 1801, as it has been called, when the first and leading act of Mr. Jefferson was to recommend an immediate repeal of all the internal taxes of the preceding administration. 1 he repea was accordingly made by one of the earliest acts of the new Congress; and m his secoud inaugural address, Mr. Jefferson, in reviewing the results of the first term ol his ad¬ ministration, dwells on nothing with so much c ngratulation to the country, as well as pride and complacency in regard to the merits of his own conduct, as the change he had .assisted to introduce in the financial policy of the Government, by a total discontinuance of the system of internal taxes. What he says on the subject is so full of just and in¬ structive observation, that I may be excused for reading it to the Senate, which I am the more tempted to do, as the remarks of the Senator from New Hampshire show that it may be neither an useless nor unseasonable reminiscence. “ At home, fellow citizens,” says Mr. Jefferson, “ you best know whether we have done well or ill. The suppression of unnecessary offices, of useless establishments and expenses, enabled us to discontinue our internal taxes. These, covering our land with officers, and opening our doors to their intrusions, had already begun that process of domiciliary vexation which, once entered, is scarcely to be restrained from reaching successively every article of property and produce. If among these taxes some minor ones fell, which had not been inconvenient, it was because their amount would not have paid the officer who collected them, and because, if they had any merit, the State au¬ thorities might adopt them, instead of others less approved. The remaining revenue on the consumption of foreign articles is paid chiefly by those who can afford to add foreign luxuries to domestic comforts. Being collected on our seaboard and frontier only, and incorporated with the transactions of our mercantile citizens, it may be the pleasure and the pride of an American to ask, what farmer, what mechanic, what laborer ever sees a tax-gatherer of the United States ?” ... The honorable Senator from New Hampshire fell into a chronological mistake m re¬ ferring to the year 1812 for another example of direct taxes and excise, which deserves the more to be noticed because the continued adherence to the system of external du¬ ties, under the very exigent and embarrassing circumstances of that period, furnishes the strongest possible testimony of the opinion held by the able and enlightened men then employed in the administration of the Government, of the preference due to im¬ posts, over every other mode of supplying the public necessities. The wai with Eng¬ land was declared in June, 1812 ; and although it brought with it necessarily a demand for a large increase of revenue, while its effect would, in all probability, be to curtail very much the foreign commerce, which, for the last ten years, had been the only source of supply to°the Treasury of any moment, still the Government did not at that time, as the Senator from New Hampshire supposes, resort to direct taxes and excises. ■Qq the contrary, Mr. Gallatin, who was then at the head of the Treasury Depaitment, recommended an increase of 100 per cent . in the pre-existing rates of duties on foreign imports, rather than have recourse to direct taxes or excises ; and this recommendation was carried into effect by an act of Congress, passed in July, 1812, raising the imposts 100 per cent. No excise or direct tax was imposed till late in the summer of 1813, more than twelve months after the declaration of war, and when the continuance of the I '6 7 ^^ *at it became literal* which °l ^ hr ^ difficulties mces77y—the U duties 7*7Importalio^—^source o7re7 ^^“s, J5 retriThetafo* 1 t EA mented by the vast accumulation of debt durin/thf/wn^ , rreasur > r (greatly aug- were renealed • and 1 warj would admit, all these taxes InnualCrt’of^ISltwas“^i^ 0 " ° f Mr ' DalIas - f “ ^ on the domestic manufactures of the countrJ ul 7 ’i e 8 ? eci ? ]U r> of that description of tax Carolina (Mr. McDt^rS seen sTo favor 7 h ° norable Senator from South 17 mischievous, in ii tenie^cy to obst^’t aSd^etard ^ “ P?*^ Since the repeal of those war taxe Z r!/ pr °S ress of national industry. for more thaw a quarter of a century, ’in the policy of n’ n^ P ersevered * great weight which I freely admit to bp r 1 n P t fp g • ers . on and Gallatin ; and the New Hampshire will hardly WW th d * * th ® hnancial opinions of the Senator from precedents of 1794 rndmi ^ C ° 7 t0 retUm t0 the ° bsolete and GX P^ded March, 1789, to thi 31st of December1840 The111 “? T7 fr ° m . the 4,h of this period of fifty-two years is $892 240 722 f L ? g , ga e of these recel P ts > during 923 302 was derived fml ’< ® 89 ~’ 340 > 7d3 > of which the enormous amount of $746, - and 829 f ™ customs alone, while $12,744,73 only came from direct taxes =^^SSSsS^SSSsS SS~5 ; :5}ESS9ig the energies of the nation, but always ceasing wheneve^ the enfergencyTe’ases constitution^l'reMrfct^^^t'i^saulfthat^lth^'ugl^a'belefit'm" S “fd °' le »«. ,"S »£ trr^r;* ^ f ~ ste the most approved formula of the political school which has aCdlw 7 ' S 10 tion of dunes, you may discriminate for the sake of revenue, lit you alffl * Mr. Gallatin’s Annual Report on the Finances, in November, 1807. # 7 nate for the benefit of the labor and the capital, which are the only sources of both public and private revenue. 1 will venture to assert, that so inexorable and Rhadamanthian a rule was never prac¬ tised upon by any Government under the sun—not even in the sheerest and most naked exercise of the taxing power. It would convert the office of raising revenue for the support of Government into a summary act of confiscation, and reduce the skill of the financier (which Burke and others have exalted into the dignity of the highest political science) to the mere arts of a fiscal extortioner. All the writers on political economy and finance lay down rules of preference and selection in the imposition of taxes, having reference to their effects on industrial interests, on public morals, and the general oase and convenience of the people, as well as to their productiveness of revenue. In every civilized Government, the authority which imposes taxes to supply the exigen¬ cies of the public service, seeks to impose them in the manner which may prove the most beneficial, or the least injurious to the general interests of society. Hence in many countries taxes are laid by preference, which, while they yield the requisite reve¬ nue, discourage vice, or check extravagance and luxury. In every country in which industry and the arts have made any progress, many foreign articles which are made use of, as raw materials or otherwise, in established branches of domestic manufactures, are either exempted from duty, or subjected to lighter duties, with a view solely to pro¬ mote production in those particular trades, and a consequent increase of national wealth, But I will not enter further into this view of the doctrine, which has been recently set up as a new standard of political faith. There is a radical error in it under the particu¬ lar provisions of our Constitution, which it is more important to notice. It wholly overlooks, or rather annihilates, a vital and fundamental power of the Constitution—-the power to “regulate commerce with foreign nations.” If there be any proposition, connected with the history and meaning of the Constitution, which rests upon more in¬ controvertible proofs than another, it is that the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations directly and necessarily includes the power to protect domestic industry by burthens and restrictions imposed upon foreign productions. It is a very narrow and inadequate conception of the scope and operation of an impost duty which sees in it nothing but a fiscal resource. It is at the same time, and equally, a regulation of com¬ merce. If gentlemen will look back to the proceedings on that fundamental act of our legislation—the act of 1789, for laying duties on foreign imports—they will see that Mr. Madison, in introducing the bill, expressly stated that it presented two points for consi¬ deration—the first respected the regulation of commerce —the second related to revenue. One of the most familiar and ordinary means or instruments of regulating commerce is the imposition of duties; and one of the most ordinary and familiar exertions of the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, is to impose duties on foreign pro¬ ductions in order to encourage and promote rival branches of industry at home. The commercial legislation of all countries, which have attained any degree of im¬ portance in the eyes of the world, abounds with examples of this use of the power. In England particularly, from whose political and Commercial vocabulary the phrase was transplanted into our constitutional and popular language, this had been its well known use and application for centuries. It was rendered doubly familiar, in this sense, to the mind of every man in America, from its having entered so largely into our colo¬ nial controversies with the mother country. The distinction upon which we stood, as every person who has the slightest knowledge of the history of his country well knows, was this—that Great Britain had no right to tax the trade of the colonies, with¬ out their consent, for revenue , but as the parent and presiding power, she had the ad¬ mitted right to do so for the regulation of commerce —that is, to impose duties on the productions of foreign countries coming to the colonies, with a view to restrain and discourage their introduction, and thereby secure the market of the colonies to her own manufactures. This was the conceded and well understood extent and operation of the power to regulate commerce in all our ante-revolutionary history. In that period of our history which followed the close of the revolution, and immedi- I 8 ately preceded the formation of the Constitution—a period which, from the inadequacy of the Articles of Confederation to provide for the new wants of an independent national existence, was filled with every variety of embarrassment, suffering, and distress, and which has been aptly compared to the journey of the Israelites through the wilderness— the power to regulate commerce , with its vitally important objects and uses, again be¬ came a paramount and absorbing subject of public solicitude and discussion. In conse¬ quence of the want of any such power on the part of the federal authority, and the vari¬ ous and conflicting regulations of the several States nullifying and defeating each other, the condition of the country, in all the great interests of the national industry, had become one of the most melancholy and ruinous depression. Our ports being thrown open to the admission of foreign merchandise, with hardly any restriction, while our own produce and trade were either prohibited or subjected to burdensome and oppres¬ sive restrictions in other countries, the consequence was the total prostration of the energies of American industry and enterprise in all their departments, under this unequal state of things. The useful branches of manufactures which had sprung into existence during the war of the revolution, and had been gradually extending themselves, were overwhelmed by the inundation of foreign goods which was thus let in upon the coun¬ try ; agriculture was shut out from the markets it had been accustomed to find abroad, for its surplus productions, and our navigation was driven from the ocean, and threatened with destruction, by the unfriendly discriminations and exclusive regulations of other maritime powers. The result of this state of things was a vast and constantly increasing accumulation of foreign debt, without the means of paying it, weighing like an incubus upon the national spirits and resources, and paralyzing every limb of the national enter¬ prise. It was to remedy these appalling evils, and expressly and emphatically to protect all of these great interests of American industry, that the country called loudly for the investiture of the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations in the authorities of the Union, by which alone it could be efficiently exercised. It was by the salutary agency of this power, in the hands of the federal authority, that all these beneficent and important results were to be accomplished. Protection of domestic interests was the end, the motive, the vital essence of the power over foreign, commerce delegated by the new Constitution to Congress. But surely, Mr. President, it would be a labor of presumptuous supererogation in me to detain the Senate with the discussion of a question which has received so conclusive an elucidation from the hands of the h ather of the Constitution himself. I need hardly say, sir, that 1 refer to the letters of Mr. Madison, addressed to a citizen of Virginia in 1828, in which he has shown by the most luminous development, and with a weight of authority which at¬ taches to no other name on questions of constitutional construction, that this very power of regulating commerce with foreign nations embraces fully, and was meant to embrace, the encouragement and protection of the domestic industry of the country bv impost duties adapted to the object, whenever the wisdom of Congress should deem the exer¬ cise of the power expedient and proper. On that demonstration the general intelligence- of the country has reposed, and may well repose, with undoubting confidence. It may not be amiss, however, Mr. President, to advert for a few moments to the prac¬ tical construction of their powers on this subject, established by the first Congress which assembled under the Constitution. That Comgress consisted of some of the first minds of America, and in a very large number, of the same individuals who had been members,, either of the Federal Convention which framed the Constitution, or of the several State conventions which had ratified it. If any body of men, therefore, could be presumed to be qualified, above all others, to know the true meaning and spirit of the Constitution which they had so large a personal agency in framing, and which they were now called on to put into practical operation, it was the collection of able and experienced statesmen, who composed the Congress of ’89. And here, sir, I may be permitted to remark that contemporaneous construction is, in my judgment, the safest guide to the meaning and intention of political institutions, as it has always been held to be in the interpretation of laws on which the rights, and interests, and responsibilities of individuals in civil life 9 depend. In either case, the object is to arrive at the real intention of those who made the law, or founded and agreed to the Constitution; and surely this can be better learned from the parties who were engaged in the transaction, or their associates or contempo¬ raries, than from scholiasts and commentators who, by new and ingenious interpreta¬ tions, bring to light some recondite and hitherto undiscovered and unavowed policy or design. In this view, the proceedings of the Congress of ’89 are of the highest importance. The act passed by them laying duties on foreign imports was, as we all know, de¬ clared upon its own face to be “ for the encouragement and protection of manufactures,” as well as for obtaining revenue for the support of the Government and the discharge of the public debt. But the Senator from New Hampshire (Mr. Atherton) who addressed the Senate yesterday, contended that the duties in the act of ’89 were laid with a view to re¬ venue alone, and ingeniously argued, that if the act was declared to be also “for the encou¬ ragement and protection of manufactures,” it was only because the enlightened framers of it thought mere revenue duties sufficient for protection. But this supposititious explanation of the character of the act is contradicted by the whole course of the debate which took place upon it. The principle of protection , as a substantive element in the bill, was avowed or admitted by every member who took part in the debate. When a long list of articles for specific duties was offered to be added to those embraced in the original pro¬ position of Mr. Madison—articles which were finally incorporated in the bill—he ac¬ cepted them, expressly declaring that some of the proposed duties may be “ productive of revenue ,” and some may “ protect our domestic manufactures " thus distinguishing them into separate classes, as having revenue or protection respectively for their object, though combined in the same bill. On the following day, Mr. Clymer, of Pennsylvania, adverting to the character of the act, said he “ did not object to this mode of encourag¬ ing manufactures and obtaining revenue by combining the two objects in one bill. He was satisfied there was a political necessity for the one and the other , and it would not be amiss to do it in this way.” If the honorable Senator will look a little further into the detail of the legislative pro¬ ceedings on that occasion, he will find various articles brought forward day after day on the express ground of meriting encouragement by means of protecting duties. The House of Representatives was engaged for weeks, in committee of the whole, in an emulous selection of objects connected with the agriculture or manufactures of the coun¬ try, which were supposed to have the strongest claims to legislative protection. One of the most singular results disclosed by this review—and I beg leave to call the atten¬ tion of my honorable friend from South Carolina (Mr. McDuffie) to it, that he may correct me if I have fallen into error—is, that that very interest of the cotton culture, which of late years has been most violently arrayed against the principle of protection, in all probability took its origin, as a stable and regular branch of national industry, in the protective and beneficent provisions of the act of ’89. I find, on looking into the debates on that occasion, that, the duty on hemp being under consideration, Mr. Burke, a member from South Carolina, warmly advocated it, believing that the lands of South Carolina and Georgia were well adapted to its growth. He stated that the staple products of that part of the Union (meaning doubtless rice and indigo) were hardly worth cultivating, on account of their fall in price ; that the planters were therefore disposed to pursue some other; that hemp, he thought, might be attempted by them with advantage; and he added, “ cotton is likewise in contempla¬ tion among them , and if good seed could be procured, he hoped it might succeed." This was on the 16th of April, ’89. The bill was returned from the Senate on the 12th of June, with an amendment imposing three cents per pound on cotton, which was con¬ curred in by the House, and at that rate the duty on cotton has ever since stood, through all the successive mutations of the tariff in other respects, from 1789 to the present time. Now, sir, it happens, by a very remarkable coincidence, that this very year, 1789 is noted in the history of the cotton trade, as the era of the first introduction of the sea- island cotton into the United States, and of the permanent establishment of the cotton. 10 calture generally, as a systematic branch of American agriculture in the southern States of the Union. The circumstances attending the first essay in the culture of the sea-island cotton in the United States, as given by the historians of a trade which has produced so o-reat a revolution in the industry and commerce of the world, are so curious in this particular connexion, that they deserve to be mentioned. It appears that a West India planter, who had removed to Georgia for the purpose of engaging in the culture of cotton, received from a friend in Jamaica, in the spring of 1786, several sacks of the Pernam¬ buco cotton seed. No use, however, was made of these seeds until 1789, when a suc¬ cessful experiment was made with them, to which is traced the first introduction of the culture of the sea-island cotton into the United States ; and from the same epoch is dated the introduction, to any considerable extent, of the cultivation of the upland cotton, and the permanent establishment of the cotton plant as a staple production of the United States.* This coincidence between the first establishment of the cotton culture as a branch of national industry, and the protective duty of ’89, may, after all, it is true, be a fortuitous association; but it certainly is no violent presumption to suppose that the countenance and encouragement thus extended by the legislature to an infant enterprise, in its first feeble efforts to maintain itself, gave a confidence and security to all engaged in it, which contributed greatly to its successful and firm establishment. (Mr. McDuffie here said that it was a low duty, not averaging, at that time, more than ten per cent, of the price of the article, and was imposed for revenue.) The protective duties then imposed, said Mr. Rives, were all moderate, as the Sena¬ tor from South Carolina has himself shown, it being deemed expedient, as will be seen by reference to the debates, to begin with moderate duties, and to increase them after¬ wards, by degrees, as should be found necessary. Whatever proportion the duty of 3 cents per pound on cotton may have borne to the price of the article at that time, we know that, for years past, it has been equivalent to from thirty to fifty percent. ad valo¬ rem. That it was high enough at first to operate as a material protection to the planter is, I think, clearly proved by the earnest recommendation of General Hamilton, in his report on manufactures in 1791, to repeal it, as highly injurious to the interests of the cotton manufacturer. The Senator from South Carolina will see, if he will turn to that report, that General Hamilton considered the duty high enough to be, in the language of the report, “ a very serious impediment to the progress of the cotton manufactories.” The cotton then produced in the southern States was considered of an inferior quality to that imported from abroad; and the Secretary of the Treasury, deeming it to be of great importance to the success of the infant cotton manufactures, just starting into existence, that they should have “ the full benefit.of the best materials on the cheapest terms,” ear¬ nestly urged the repeal of the duty, as indispensable ” for that object. All this, sure¬ ly, implies such an enhancement of price from the operation of the duty, or such a dim¬ inution of the supply of the foreign article under its effects, as to be a virtual protection to the American planter, at the expense of the manufacturer. At the same time, he pro¬ posed, as a substitute for the duty on imported cotton, a bounty on the domestic cotton; thus recognising, by the nature of the substitute, the protective character of the duty he proposed to repeal! Notwithstanding the urgent recommendation of General Hamilton, the duty was not repealed, nor has it been repealed or reduced, down to the present day. Can it be supposed, if there was no other interest involved but that of the trifling revenue it yielded, it could have withstood such a recommendation, coming from so high and so influential an official source ? But, sir, to return from what seemed to me a curious episode, at least, in the history of this question, and into which I have been drawn at greater length than I intended— Nothing is more incontrovertible than the numerous and prominent protective features in the act of 1789. Let any gentleman look into the instructive debates which took place on that occasion, and he will see at once how largely the consideration of protec¬ tion entered into the very foundation of that act. A series of duties on various produc- *Sec White’s History of the Cottou Manufacture, cited in Hunt’s Merchants’ Magazine for March, 1S41. Art. 1, “The American Cotton Trade. , 11 tions of agriculture or manufactures—distilled spirits, beer, ale, porter, cheese, soap, candles, boots, shoes, and other manufactures of leather, steel, nails, spikes, hemp, cor¬ dage, manufactured tobacco and snuff, coal, glass, paper, &c., &c., was proposed and carried, expressly and avowedly with a view to the protection and encouragement of the domestic industry of the country. Revenue and protection went hand in hand through the provisions of the act, as substantive but associated objects, in the minds of the en¬ lightened legislature of that day. The foundations of our national policy were laid on the union of these two elements, by the wise men who had had the chief agency in the formation of the Constitution, and who were first called to the practical administration of its powers. All this took place during the first session of the first Congress which assembled un¬ der the Constitution. The principle, then settled, met with a yet more emphatic con¬ tinuation, by the unanimous voice of the representatives of the people, at the succeed¬ ing session of the same Congress ; which, as it has not hitherto been noticed, so far as I know, I may be excused for bringing to the recollection of the Senate. The first speech, (as it was called,) of General Washington to Congress was made in January, 17h0, at the second session of that body. In the course of the speech, he congratulated Congress that “ the measures of the last session had proved satisfactory to their con¬ stituents, recommended to them “ the advancement of agriculture, commerce, and man¬ ufactures by all proper means,” and declared with emphatic earnestness that “ the safety and interest of a free people require that they should promote such manufactories as tend to render them independent of other nations for essential, particularly military, supplies.” To this speech the House of Representatives returned an address, (as the usage then was,) in which they say—“We concur with you in the sentiment that agriculture,com¬ merce, and manufactures are entitled to legislative protection;” and though the draught of the address, as reported, underwent several amendments in the House, none was pro¬ posed to this important passage, and the address containing it was, as the journal states, unanimously agreed to by the House. The principle of protection, carried into practi¬ cal details in the act of 89, at the first session of the first Congress which met under the Constitution, was thus solemnly and unanimously ratified by the same enlightened body at its second session, with the concurrence of the Father of his country, who had himself presided over the deliberations of the Convention which framed the Constitution. I was very much surprised, Mr. President, to hear the Senator from Alabama, who addressed the Senate a few days ago, (Mr. Bagby,) say that none of the earlier Presi¬ dents had given their sanction to the principle of protection. We have just seen what Washington did. Mr. Jefferson, in the high public stations which he filled at different times, has, pernaps, done as much as any other American statesman to recommend and enforce this principle. In his report, as Secretary of State, in February, 1791, on the Fisheries, he urged, with an ability and comprehensive and national spirit which did him the highest honor, the propriety and expediency of increasing the duties on foreign fish, for the protection and encouragement of our hardy and enterprising eastern fishermen. He anticipated many of the arguments which have since become the leading topics in favor of protection; and among them, the policy of “ compensating, as far as practicable, the loss of markets abroad, by the creation of markets at home.” This report, it must be borne in mind, preceded the celebrated report of General Hamilton on manufactures near a twelve-month; and I will here remark, that it was not the principle of protection, but some of the means by which that distinguished statesman proposed to carry it into effect, to wit, bounties, premiums, and the discretionary disposal of large funds by a board of public officers, together with some very broad principles of constitutional ^construction, which rendered the able and masterly report of General Hamilton obnox¬ ious at the time to the republican sentiment of the country. In place of these direct stimulants, Mr. Jefferson proposed the indirect but, probably, not less efficient encour¬ agement, of duties on rival foreign productions. This policy he brought forward, still more systematically and elaborately than he had done in his report on the Fisheries, in a report made by him, as Secretary of State, in December, 1793, on the state of our for- * 12 eign commerce, In which he recommended, that when a nation imposes high duties on our productions, or prohibits them altogether, we should do the same by theirs; and, unlike the modern school of a cosmopolite political economy, which insists that all discriminations in the imposition of duties should be mad z against the productions of our own industry, he recommended such a gradation of duties “ as should first burden or exclude those productions which they, (foreign nations,) bring here, in competition with our own of the same kind .” [Mr. Bagby here said, that he had referred to the messages to Congress of our early Presidents, and particularly to those of Mr. Jefferson, in which he recommended such aid to be given to agriculture, manufactures, &c., as was “ within the limits of the con¬ stitutional powers” of Congress ; so that nothing is gained, unless it be shown that he entertained the opinion that Congress has the constitutional power to lay duties for protection .'] Mr. Rives resumed : The honorable Senator read from the first message ot Mr. Jel- ferson to Congress, in which the qualification cited by him is contained, and by which Mr. Jefferson probably meant to exclude such modes of encouragement as had been suggested by Gen. Hamilton, and which he considered unconstitutional. But that he deemed duties for protection clearly constitutional, is proved by his having strongly recommended them in both of the above mentioned reports, made by him as Secretary of State, and still more explicitly by the language and recommendations of his subse¬ quent messages. In his very next message to Congress, (in 1802,) he recommended, the “ protection of the manufactures adapted to our circumstances,” as one of the great land-marks of a sound national policy. In 1806, when the flourishing state of our foreign commerce had caused the impost duties to yield a large surplus beyond the existing demands of the Government, he preferred all the dangers and embarrassments of that surplus, rather than by reducing the duties, to “ give that advantage,” to use his own language, “ to foreign, over domestic manufactures;” and in 1808, when the ag¬ gressions upon our neutral commerce by the belligerent powers of Europe, had, in a great degree, driven it from the ocean, and caused a large portion of the capital and in¬ dustry of our citizens to be applied to manufactures, he expressly recommended “ pro¬ tecting duties ,” and even “ prohibitions ” as among the proper means of giving secu¬ rity and permanency to this new direction of the national industry. This was the lan¬ guage of his last message as President to Congress, and crowns with a most emphatic testimony, and by recommendations of unusual energy, his long and steady advocacy of the interests of domestic industry. The opinions and public acts of Mr. Madison, through his long and eminent career of public service, were not less strongly marked by a zealous and unwavering support of the same national doctrines. In 1789, he heartily concurred, as we have seen, in. the wise and beneficent system of policy established by the first Congress under the Constitution, of which it is no disparagement of the just claims of his many able and patriotic associates to say, that he was the guiding and ruling spirit. In 1794, he was the mover and powerful champion of the celebrated commercial propositions, intended to carry into effect the principles and recommendations of Mr. Jefferson’s Report of December, 1793. In every one of his messages to Congress, during the eight years of his presidency, with the exception only of the three years of the war with England, when the question was of course temporarily suspended, he urgently recommended the manufacturing industry of the country to the “ protecting and fostering ’care of the legislature. In one of his messages before the war, he said, almost in the words oi Washington, “ The national interest requires that with respect to such articles at least as belong to our defence and our primary wants, we should not be left in unnecessary dependence upon foreign supplies.” In his very first message after the close of the war, recurring to the importance, in a national view, of sustaining the manufactures which had sprung into existence, and attained an unparalleled maturity throughout the United States, during the period of the European wars, he says, in language of emphatic earnestness, “ This source of national independence and wealth, I anxiously recommend 13 io tlac prompt and constant guardianship of Congress.” And in his succeeding message? of December, 1815, in bringing the subject again to the consideration of Congress, he enforced it with so lucid a statement of the just principles of a sound and practical com¬ mercial legislation, and by so calm and persuasive an exhibition of great national inter¬ ests, that the pregnant paragraph he devotes to it will, in all future time, be looked hack to as comprehending, in the fewest words, the most satisfactory exposition and defence of the true system of American policy.* The Senator from New Hampshire, who spoke yesterday, (Mr. Atherton,) read an isolated extract from a speech of Mr. Madison in 1789, to show that he advocated the modern doctrine of unlimited free trade. But the honorable Senator should have read other portions of the same speech, and then he would have been better qualified to judge of the creed of Mr. Madison from a view of the whole context. He would have seen, that while Mr. Madison admitted that capital and labor are, in general, most usefully employed when left to the guidance of private interest, without legislative interference, (as, indeed, who does not admit the general principle,) yet that, in the policy of nations, there are many just and necessary practical exceptions, which he proceeds distinctly to set forth and enforce in the subsequent and most important part of his speech. Among these exceptions, he particularly insists upon the duty of the Government to sustain ex¬ isting establishments, which ought not to be allowed to perish for the want of timely protection, and which it would be cruel to abandon, and leave the industry employed in them to seek new channels; for he adds, “ it is not possible for the hand of man to shift from one employment to another, without being injured by the change.” Again, he says, in the same speech, that while there are same manufactures which can advance towards perfection without any adventitious aid, there are others, which demand the “ fostering hand” of the Government, and that the prudent and wise selection of proper objects for this fostering aid, is the legitimate province of a sound legislative discretion. Let the whole doctrine of this speech of Mr. Madison be compared with the recommen¬ dations of his messages as President, and particularly with the broad and comprehen¬ sive survey of the subject contained in his leading message of 1815, and it will be seen what a beautiful and enlightened consistency linked together the acts and opinions of this great American statesman, at these two widely separated periods of his long and illustrious career. The principles of a sound discriminative commercial policy which I have thus shown to have been coeval with the Constitution itself, and to have been cherished and main¬ tained by all our great republican statesmen of an era the most fruitful in lessons of po¬ litical wisdom, are, at the same time, sanctioned by the authority of the most celebrated writers on the science of political economy—even of those whose names are often * The portion of the message of 1815, referred to above, is in the following words, which, whether as a text of instruction, or a well defined outline of a system of public policy, cannot be too often or too carefully studied. “ In adjusting the duties on imports to the object of revenue, the influence of the tariff on manufac¬ tures, will necessarily present itself for consideration. However wise the theory may be, which leaves to the sagacity and interest of individuals the application of their industry and resources, there are in this, as in other cases, exceptions to the general rule. Besides the condition which the theory itself im¬ plies, of a reciprocal adoption by other nations, experiences teaches that so many circumstances must concur in introducing and maturing manufacturing establishments, especially of the more complicated kinds, that a country may remain long without them, although sufficiently advanced, and in some re¬ spects, even peculiarly fitted for carrying them on with success. Under circumstances giving a power¬ ful impulse to manufacturing industry, it has made among us a progress, and exhibited an efficiency* which justify the belief, that with a protection not more than is due to the enterprising citizens whose- interests are now at stake, it will become, at an early day, not only safe against occasional competitions from abroad, but a source of domestic wealth, and even of external commerce. In selecting the branches more especially entitled to the public patronage, preference is obviously claimed by such as will relieve the United States from a dependence on foreign supplies, ever subject to casual failures, for articles ne¬ cessary for the public defence, or connected with the primary wants of individuals. It will be an addi¬ tional recommendation of particular manufactures, where the materials for them are extensively drawn, from agriculture, and consequently impart and insure to that great fund of national prosperity and inde¬ pendence, an encouragement which cannot fail to be rewarded.’* I 14 invoked in support of the doctrines of unlimited free trade. Adam Smith is the oracle most frequently appealed to by the disciples of the modern school of free trade. And yet Adam Smith was far from espousing the doctrines of free trade in the unqualified sense in which they are now put forward by its advocates. He says expressly that it would be as absurd to expect to see a system of unlimited free trade adopted in Great Britain, as to expect that an Oceana or Utopia should ever be established in it. In his great work on the Wealth of Nations, he has himself laid down limitations of the highest importance, and of great practical extent, upon the general freedom of trade. In the first place, he maintains distinctly that where certain branches of industry or man¬ ufactures are essential to the defence and security of the country, it is proper and wise, in all such cases, to lay burthens upon foreign, for the encouragement of domestic indus¬ try ; and upon that principle he vindicates and upholds the policy of the navigation act of Great Britain, which he pronounces to be “ the wisest, perhaps, of all her commer¬ cial regulations,” while he shows it, at the same time, to be directly at war with the fundamental canons of the free trade school. Again, he says that where foreign nations restrain by high duties or prohibitions the importaion of our productions into their coun¬ tries, it is a sound as well a just policy to impose like duties and restraints upon the introduction of the produce of their industry into ours, if there be reasonable ground to believe that the effect of such imposition may be to lead ultimately to a relaxation of the foreign restrictions or prohibitions of which we complain. Mr. Jefferson seems to have had this principle of Smith in his mind when, in his celebrated commercial report of 1793, he says : “ Free commerce and navigation are not to be given in exchange for re¬ strictions and vexations ; nor are they likely to produce a relaxation of them” A third and most important limitation laid down by Adam Smith upon the general freedom of trade is founded on the paternal regard which every just and wise government is bound to show to. existing interests. He lays it down, therefore, distinctly, that where large amounts of capital or a considerable portion of the population of a country have been employed in particular branches of industry, under the encouragement of former legislation, humanity as well as justice enjoins great “reserve and circumspection” in any modification of the laws under whose protection these interests have grown up. How wide-reaching as well as important this great principle of conservative legislation is in its application to the question now before us, I shall have occasion to show in the further progress of my remarks. Another very important, and, in its practical consequences, most fruitful exception to the general principle of free trade, though not formally stated by Adam Smith among the several limitations upon that doctrine which he enumerates, results directly from ex¬ plicit admissions and statements made by him. The argument he urges in favor of the general policy of a liberal and unrestrained commercial intercourse with foreign coun¬ tries, is founded upon the hypothesis that the articles we get from them will come cheaper to us than we can make them ourselves. In such cases, he contends that the general effect of commercial restrictions with a view to promote domestic production is, to divert industry from a more to a less advantageous employment, and to diminish the exchangable value of the annual produce of the country. But he adds this important qualification and admission: “ By means of such regulations, indeed, a particular manufacture may sometimes be acquired sooner than it could have been otherwise, and after a certain time may be made at home as cheap or cheaper than in the foreign country.”—Wealth of Nations, B. IV, Chap. 2. Here, then, is an explicit declaration by the great oracle of the free trade school, con¬ trary to what is so constantly asserted by them, (as to the necessary and invariable effect of protective duties to raise the price of the protected article,) that particular branches of industry may sometimes be introduced with advantage into a country by means of pro¬ tective duties, sooner than they otherwise would be; and that, after a time, their produce may be afforded cheaper at home than in the foreign country. Wherever such is the case, the very foundation, on which the argument against protection is built, fails. This 15 pregnant admission of the author of the Wealth of Nations, then, constitutes another and most important head of exception to the generality of the free trade principle. That there are cases in which a great reduction of price eventually takes place after the firm establishment of a manufacture, which, but for some legislative encouragement, might have remained for a long time, if not altogether, unattempted, the experience of every country seems to prove. A country may, in the possession of the raw material, or other superior natural advantages, have a peculiar aptitude for a particular manufac¬ ture, and yet from the backwardness of capital to embark on new and untried enter- prizes, or for the want of previously-acquired skill, individuals will not engage in it without the confidence and security derived from public protection; but when it has been once introduced and established under the auspices of that protection, and its practicability and advantages demonstrated, a large number of persons will be eager to invest their capital and industry in it, and the domestic competition thus produced, leading to improved processes, and to increased dexterity and skill, ultimately cheapens the article. This effect, however, must be understood as predicated only of such branches ofindustiy as a country, in its natural advantages or otherwise, possesses a decided aptitude for. The remark just quoted of Adam Smith refers to the ultimate effept which may be produced upon the price of particular articles by the operation of protective duties. Much has been said in the course of this debate, Mr. President, as to the more imme¬ diate effect of such duties upon prices. It has been contended by some that these duties are in effect paid by the producer, and do not enter into the price of the article. On the other hand, the honorable Senator from South Carolina contends that they invaiiably enhance the price of the article by the amount of the duty imposed, and are therefore paid by the consumer. A little investigation will, I think, show that there is no invari¬ able rule on the subject, but that the duty is paid bt the producer or the consumer, or divided between the two, (as often happens,) according to the circumstances of each particular case. The proposition that the duty is invariably paid by the consumer, in a corresponding increase of the price of the article, evidently rests upon the assumption of two principles, neither of which is universally true. The first of these principles is, that the price of an article always corresponds with the cost of production , or is barely suffi¬ cient to repay the actual outlay (including ordinary profit) incurred in its fabrication and preparation for market. If this were so, then it is clear that the producer could not pay the duty, for its payment would force him to quit his business. But it is not true that the price of an article always corresponds with the cost of production. On the contrary, the cost of production is, as Adam Smith says, only ( * the central point to which the market price of commodities is continually gravitating.” But various circumstances conspire, in many commodities, as he satisfactorily shows, to keep up the market price for a long time, (even for centuries, in some particular commodities,) much above the cost of pro¬ duction. In all such cases, the producer may afford to pay the duty, (if it should be necessary to do so in order to effect a ready sale of his goods,) without being forced to quit his business. The other principle assumed in the proposition, that the consumer always pays the duty, is that there is an uniform level of profits in the various employments of capital and industry, and therefore if the duty imposed upon a particular commodity were paid by the producer or dealer in the article, it would reduce his profits below the general level, and he would transfer his capital to some other employment, yielding him the general rate of profit.* But, in point of fact, there is no such uniform level of profits in the different employments of capital. There is, as Adam Smith says, a constant tendency to equality, (rather than an actual equality,) in the aggregate advantages and disadvantages of the various employments of stock and labor in the same country. But that there exist, in every country, very different rates of pecuniary profit, in differ- * This is the reasoning of Ricardo: but it is ably controverted by Say, both in his Traite and hie Cours d’economie politique, particular!)' the latter. I 16 rohlln ^ on he opposed, and to a great extent, overthrew. In intro- aucing the changes which he proposed and carried in the tariff of England, in 1825 ered X »ro^V/ deC ared n h l‘ the . aI ‘ eratlons he proposed were in duties which he consid- wordf.. b t c Ty ’ T d h ? ?,^ ed su PP° rl fo r hi® propositions, only (to use his own iJw, i a \ the y sha11 be f° und not inconsistent with the protection of our own r t Jj and subsequently, in 1830, he energetically repudiated the cognomen of which ht hi h Unn 'f“ in S a " d abs urd” in its application to the system of measures which he had brought, forward and triumphantly carried through. Moderate, judicious, P r ° tectl ° n ’ >n connexion with revenue, and as contra-distinguished from P /°Z,Z l0n ’ 13 that safe and Poetical line of policy, to which the public opinion of this untry is now rallying with an extraordinary and auspicious unanimity. There have een periods in our history when there have been strong tendencies manifested, even to a prohibitory policy The legislation of 1828 is now, by general consent, considered Npwv'T a /Lr era w that S x 0rt * But that day is past; and the honorable Senator from f * ork ’ ( Mr< Wright,) who addressed the Senate some days ago, might, therefore, ; a If.^ ed himself the trouble of the able and elaborate argument he delivered against prouitntwn. Who proposes or advocates prohibition now ? Certainly not m\ honor¬ able friend from Massachusetts, (Mr. Bates,) nor my other honorable friend, the Sen- lftI‘/ r R m f Ve u rm E nt ’ ( Mr * Phelps ’) am ong the most zealous champions of the tariff of i , 0 ha J e explicitly declared that they ask no more protection to the agri¬ cultural and manufacturing industry of their constituents than will be yielded by such a revenue tariff, with fair and proper discriminations , as may be necessary for the wise W , ec< ? n ° mical administration and support of the Government. The same sentiment Has had the sanction and concurrence of other honorable Senators from the same quar- ter ol the Union, who have borne prominent and distinguished parts in this debate. Ihis brings me, Mr. President, to some observations on the act of 1842; and first to correct a very extraordinary misconception as to the origin of that act. It has been very generally treated by its adversaries, in the discussions which have recently taken place, as a measure originating in the policy of protection. But such is not the fact. pub j. lc aiad well-known history of the measure, proves that its object was revenue, though, doubtless, in the adjustment of its details, regard was paid to the interests of domestic industry. For years, the current expenditures of the Government had been permitted to exceed its current revenue; and when the accumulation of former sur¬ pluses with which the last administration commenced its career, was exhausted, and the current revenue fell habitually short of the current expenditure, instead of resorting irect and proper means of supplying the deficiency, that administration preferred relying upon the hollow and delusive expedient of treasury notes. They thus passed the Urovernment into the hands of their successors with a large accumulation of debt and with an established deficiency in the current resources of the treasury to meet the current demands upon it. During the last year of that administration (1840) the cur- * 1 ne J*revenue of the Government was between thirteen and fourteen millions of dol- ars, while its current expenditure was between twenty-two and twenty-three millions 1 o till up so wide a gap between the income and expenses of the Government, as well as to provide for the payment of the public debt, those who succeeded to the management °l a affairs ’ deemed lt: incumbent upon them, in the high and honorable discharge ot their duty to the country, to raise additional revenue, by a fair and open resort to the necessary means of doing it. For this purpose, a law was passed, as Senators well re¬ collect, during the called session of 1841, laying duties upon various articles of foreign import, which had been previously free. The revenue, however, even with the aid of that act, still continuing entirely inadequate to meet the demands upon the Government lor its current service and the discharge of the public debt together, it became absolutely necessary to lay further duties for the support of the Government. In this necessity, the act ol 1842 had its origin; and if gentlemen will take the trouble to recollect a little 19 h the contemporary history of the measure, and especially to look at the able ami lucid “ speech of the honorable gentleman, then chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means of the other House, (Mr. Fillmore,) whose duty it was to introduce and explain the act, they will see that its open, avowed, patent and manifest object was revenue, ur¬ gently called for to sustain the faith of the nation, and to meet the wants of the public service Whatever may be the incidental operation of the act upon certain interests of domestic industry, and however its details may have been adjusted with a view to-that operation, it is still undoubtedly true that the primary and leading object of the law was While such was the object of the act, my apprehension at the time, from the high rate of some of the duties, was that its practical effect would be to discourage importa¬ tions to such a degree as to reduce, instead of augmenting, the revenue. This opinion was founded upon well authenticated data, derived from the financial experience of Eu¬ ropean Governments, in which it had been often seen that an increase of duties, by di¬ minishing consumption, lessened instead of increasing revenue. The result, however, has shown that the experience of Europe cannot be safely relied on as furnishing con¬ clusions applicable to the financial condition and resources of America. The means of consumption possessed by the industrious classes, who constitute the great mass of consumers every where, being far more limited, from the stinted reward of labor, in Eu¬ rope than in this country, any increase of duty, which occasions a sensible enhancement of price, necessarily diminishes consumption there, and is consequently often followed by a diminution, instead of an increase, of revenue. But, in the United States, the more liberal reward of labor and general prosperity of the industrious classes, giving a much greater ability to consume, an increase of duty, even .when attended with a corresponding increase of price, seems to have but little effect, comparatively, upon actual consumption here. Whatever be the true solution of the phenomenon, it must be admitted that the operation of the act of 1842, upon the foreign commerce and revenue of the country, (so far,) has not conformed to the conclusions which seemed fairly deducible from the financial experience of Europe. The foreign commerce of the country, notwithstand¬ ing the temporary derangement manifested for the first six months after the passage of the law, and which is satisfactorily accounted for by the uncertainty which had pre¬ vailed in regard to the final action of Congress upon the subject, is now in a more vigor¬ ous and flourishing state than it has been for years ; and the revenue from customs, in¬ stead of falling off, has increased from 13 to 17 millions in the first year of the opera¬ tion of the act, and during the present year, according to statements communicated by the Treasury Department, will reach to 20 or perhaps 25 millions. I have now before me a comparative statement of the foreign commerce and revenue receipts of the port of Boston for the first quarter of 1843, and the corresponding quar¬ ter of 1844, which exhibits, in so striking a point of view, the progressive operation of the act of 1842, in both of these respects, that I cannot forbear to give the results of it to the Senate. During the first quarter of 1843, when the effect of the act of 1842 had hardly begun to be felt, the number of ships from foreign ports arrived at Boston, was 138. During the first quarter of the present year, the number of foreign arrivals there was 222, being an increase, in a single quarter, of 84. During the first quarter of 1843, the revenue received from customs at Boston was $589,740 ; the like revenue received there during the first quarter of the present year was $1,310,000, exhibiting an increase of revenue, for a single quarter, of $720,259. From another statement 1 have in my posses¬ sion, it appears that the revenue from customs, received at the port of New York alone, during the first quarter of the present year, was $5,731,546, exceeding the estimates in the annual Treasury report of the gross receipts from all the custom-houses in the Union during the,first quarter of the year. So signal and decisive have been the actual results thus far of the operation of the act of 1842 upon the commerce and revenue of the country, contrasted with the apparently well-founded conclusions derived from the experience of other countries, under the influence of which my vote was recorded against its passage. It is the remark of a celebrated and profound philosophical writer,* * Hunw. I 20 ihat “ it frequently happens, in political institutions, that the consequences of things are diametrically opposite to what we should expect on the first appearance.” In nothing' is this so much the case, and reasonings a priori as little to be relied on, or so liable to bo contradicted by results, as in the complex problems of trade and finance; and I have lived much too long, Mr. President, not to be sensible of the fallability of human judg¬ ment, and to be prepared, at all times, to surrender opinions to the demonstrations of ex¬ perience. While such has been the operation of the act of 1842 upon the revenue and foreign com¬ merce of the nation, its effects upon other connected interests have been alike propitious and remarkable. The credit of the Government, the entire prostration of which, before the passage of the law, had been a source of deep humiliation to every American citi¬ zen, has suddenly sprung up, as if touched by the wand of the enchanter, and is again the object of universal confidence at home and abroad. Private and individual credit have risen with it; and the slumbering spirit of American enterprise has once more waked up, as a giant from his sleep. Amid the general activity and animation in all the pursuits of the national industry, no interest is oppressed by the operation of the law ; for the very existence of the controversy, which has been maintained with equal zeal and confidence on both sides, in regard to prices , proves that there cannot have been any material change in that respect, one way or the other. If some articles have risen in price, others have fallen ; and in the general result, the interests of the great body of consumers remain unaffected. In this state of things, and when it is admitted, on all hands, that all the revenue which the tariff established by the act of 1842 is capable of yielding, is absolutely ne¬ cessary, at present, either for the current service of the Government, or for the discharge of the public engagements, shall we wantonly interpose and arrest it in the full tide of its success, simply because it does not conform to the theories of some gentlemen in regard to the true standard of revenue duties, or that we may afford them the gratification of a party triumph in the overthrow of a law against which they have sworn a solemn vow of vengeance upon the altar of their party allegiance ? For one, I cannot consent to do it. The great public interests involved are vastly too important to be made the sport of speculative theories or of legislative caprice. If we look alone to the interests, more im¬ mediately concerned, which have grown up to their present magnitude under the foster¬ ing influence of that system of laws of which the act of 1842 forms a part, we should survey the ground carefully when we propose a fundamental alteration in their provisions. The amount of capital invested in the various branches of manufacturing industry in the United States, including mining and the mechanic arts, does not, at this moment, proba¬ bly, fall short of four hundred millions of dollars ; and the number of persons connected with these pursuits, if we add to the operatives themselves their families and their de¬ pendants, has been computed to amount to about four millions of the free population of America Where so large an amount of the national capital is involved, and the liveli¬ hood of so numerous and interesting a portion of the population of the country may be compromised, it surely becomes us, as guardians of the national weal, looking to the interest of every part as redounding to, and indissolubly connected with, the strength and prosperity of the whole, to proceed with caution by the clear lights of experience, and not to surrender ourselves blindly to preconceived and untested theories. In a voyage where the venture is so great, we should heave the lead every step of our pro¬ gress. Let experience decide the nature and extent of changes in the law', as changes shall from time to time be shown to be necessary and expedient, and then we may have the reasonable hope of correcting existing evils, without the danger of introducing new and still greater ones. There are those, I fear, Mr. President, who, in the heats engendered in our political controversies, have come to regard this great branch of the national industry and wealth with aversion rather than favor. But a little reflection will satisfy them that manufac¬ tures, with the extraordinary improvements of art introduced by the inventive genius of the age, form a chief and most important element in the strength and power of modem States. The effects of labor-saving machinery in this department of human industry, 21 I in facilitating, cheapening, and augmenting production, have, within the last half century, made an almost magical addition to the riches and financial resources of the nations most largely engaged in manufactures. What but the wonderful development of this new source of wealth and power in England, during that eventful period, enabled her to sustain, not only without exhaustion, but with undiminished prosperity, especially nr her (treat agricultural interest, the extraordinary financial efforts called for in her mighty simple with the colossal power of Europe, consolidated and directed by the ascendant genfus and energy of Napoleon ? One of the most enlightened of her statistical writers,, in a verv instructive work published a few years since, says, in reference to this subject— “ It is to the spinning jenny and the steam engine that we must look as the true mov¬ ing powers of our fleets and armies, and as the chief support, also, of a long continued agricultural prosperity.”* c . , We have a striking illustration of the creative powers of the same species of md ^ st ry*' in addin* to the mass of national wealth, in the history of our own country since 18,50.. In that year, according to the census returns, the gross annual amount of manufactures- produced in the United States was $36,115,000. In 1840, their nett annual amount, (after deducting one-third of the gross amount on account of the.value of raw materials,}, was $239,836,224; thus exhibiting an increase of more than six hundred per cent, m twenty years, without making any allowance for the difference between gross and nett value. ’An able and learned writer of my own State, (Professor Tucker,) who has laid the whole country, and especially its legislators and public men, under deep obligation by his recent valuable work on its statistical history, has deduced, from a comparison of the data furnished by our census returns, the decennial rate of increase of the nationai wealth in each of the great branches of national industry in the United States. I e- shows the average decennial increase of wealth in those various branches, or tie as fifty years, to have been about fifty per cent., while the increase m manufactures for each term of ten years, since 1820, has been at the extraordinary rate of two hundred and eighty-four per cent., according to the data which he considers safest for a com¬ parative estimate. There is one criterion, susceptible of precise ascertainment, which seems fully to sustain this estimate, surprising as it is in its results. 1 l refer: to 1the ports of domestic manufactures, which in 1820 were $2,342*000; in 1840, $12,868,840 , and in 1841, $13,523,071; being an increase of more than sixfold m twenty-one years,, while no other class of domestic exports has even doubled in the same period. Every person, Mr. President, must perceive, at once, the immense benefits resulting from this rapid growth of the manufacturing wealth and industry of the country to alt the other great branches of American enterprise—to our commerce, to our navigation, to our agriculture. We have just seen, sir, how strikingly it has already fulfilled he- anticipation expressed by Mr. Madison in his memorable message of December, 1815, that it would “become, at an early day, not only a source of domestic wealth, but ol external commerce .” Its contributions to the foreign commerce of the country wi become daily greater and greater, as the rapid improvement in the skill of our artizans,. and the superiority of their fabrics, become more and more known. But^it is in furnish¬ ing exchanges for the vast interior commerce of our own country, through the multiplied channels of intercourse along our lakes, our rivers, our canals, bur railroads and our sea- coast, that its great importance to the commercial and navigating interests of the country is chiefly seen and felt. I have been so much struck with a statement on this subject, contained in a recent public letter of an able and distinguished gentleman, (Mr. N athan Appleton of Boston,) with whom I have had the honor of being associated in the pub- - lie service here, and whose high personal character and accurate practical information are known to all, that I take the liberty to read it to the Senate. “ The trade, says- Mr. Appleton, “between Boston and New Orleans, employs a greater amount of ton¬ nage than that between New York and Liverpool ever did. Upwards of fifty square rigged vessels of the larger class, have arrived at this port during the sixty days of Feb¬ ruary and March—one half of their cargoes, at least, consisting of the produce ot the- * Porter’s progress of the nation, vol. I, p. 188. I 22 valley of the Ohio. This trade is the result of the protective system. How could we # take their beef, pork, flour, lard and wool, if they did not take our calicoes, cottons, cabinet wares, shoes and other notions?” / Let us glance, for a moment, at the advantages flowing from this great development of the manufacturing industry of the country to the most important of our interests— the nursing mother of all the rest—our agriculture. It is manufactures, Mr. President which create the chief demand for the produce of agriculture, either as subsistence for those employed in them, or as raw materials for the fabrics wrought by them. Hence it has grown into an axiom of political economy, that “ flourishing manufactures and commerce are indispensable to a flourishing agriculture;” and I cannot agree, Mr. President, with the honorable Senator from South Carolina, (Mr. McDuffie,) that Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds are our natural markets for the consumption of our produce, or the supply of our wants. On the contrary, the great oracle so often in¬ voked by those who belong to the same school of economical science and policy as the •honorable Senator, expressly declares that “ every country is necessarily the best and most extensive market for the greater part of the productions of its own industry.”* If this be true of countries in general, how emphatically true is it of a country of such vast extent, and of such diversified productions and forms of industry, as the United States. It is only necessary to recollect that cotton is not the only, or indeed the chief agricultural production of the United States, to be convinced that American agriculture must ever find the most important market for the mass of its productions at home, and in the diversified employments of our own citizens. In saying this, I am far from in¬ tending to depreciate the great importance of foreign commerce, whether in its moral and political influences, or in its positive results. On the contrary, I heartily assent to all that the honorable Senator so eloquently said in regard to it; and I wish to see it expand and flourish, as I believe it is destined to do, hand in hand with that great inte¬ rior commerce which must ever remain by far the greater interest, both in the inappre¬ ciable extent of its numberless operations, (which the imagination can hardly embrace, and which no power of figures can estimate in a country like ours,) and in the surpass¬ ing importance of its benefits to the nation. It is deeply to be regretted that in the administrative organization of the Government, no provision has yet been made for collecting such data as might enable us to form some approximative idea of the vast extent and importance of our interior trade. I hope it will not be long before this defect shall be supplied. In the absence of any official re¬ turns, my attention has been drawn to such estimates as have been framed, for separate portions of the Union, by individual industry and intelligence. Among these, I find a table annexed to a report recently submitted to the House of Representatives from its Committee on Manufactures, containing an estimate of the agricultural products of other States, annually consumed for subsistence or manufacture, in the State of Massachusetts. These products consist of cotton, flour, Indian corn, beef, pork, bacon, hides, leather, tobacco, and numerous other articles of agricultural produce, the growth of other States of the Union, annually imported into Massachusetts, and amounting, in the aggregate, to $40,741,150. This estimate, for a single State, may serve as a sample, to* give us . some idea of the extent to which the agricultural States of the West and the South find a market for their various productions in the manufacturing States of the East and the North. But of the intimate connexion and mutual dependence which bind together all the great branches of national industry—agriculture, manufactures, commerce and na¬ vigation—no proofs in detail can be needed. You cannot wound one, without inflict¬ ing an injury on the rest; and any sudden innovation in the laws to which the manu¬ facturing industry of the country owes its present prosperity, would give a sympathetic shock to every other interest and pursuit, while, at the same time, it would derange the finances, and endanger the credit of the Government. Having thus stated the considerations which determine my judgment against any dis¬ turbance, at present, of the act of 1842, I might here close my remarks. But having * Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, B. r. chap. ii. t 23 I observed with deep regret, the marked antagonism in which two of the most distin¬ guished States of this confederacy, South Carolina and Massachusetts, have been con¬ stantly placed towards each other, and the sharp words of recrimination and complaint exchanged between them during the progress of this debate, in regard to interests pecu¬ liarly cherished by each, I have supposed it might not be without its use, in moderating the violence of these collisions, to recal the solemn compact entered into directly and particularly by thess tw® States, in the adjustment of those parts of the Constitution under which the interests alluded to have respectively grown up. I know, Mr. Presi- sident, the dangers which attend the office of mediator, in family quarrels ; but the piece of constitutional history to which I refer, is in itself so curious and instructive, and in¬ culcates, through the remembrance of the past, so just a lesson of mutual forbearance and moderation, that I trust to be excused for entering into some, development of it. By the first draft of the Constitution, as it came from the hands of the committee of detail, in the convention, Congress was invested with the general power to “regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several States.” Out of the generality of this grant, however, certain exceptions were made and restrictions imposed, by two subsequent sections of the instrument. By the first of these sections (4th sec. art. 7) it was declared that “ no tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any State; nor on the migration or importation of such persons as the several States shall think proper to admit; nor shall such migration or importation he prohibited .” This se¬ cured to such of the States as desired it, the unlimited privilege of importing slaves, free from any control of Congress. By the other section referred to, (6th sec. art. 7,) it was provided that “ no navigation act shall be passed without the assent of two-thirds of the members present in each house.” This put it out of the power of a mere majority of the two Houses of Congress to pass navigation laws, in which the eastern and northern States were particularly interested. In this state of things, Luther Martin, of Maryland,, moved to amend the first of the above-mentioned sections, “ so as to allow a prohibition or tax on the importation of slaves.” This motion aroused an earnest opposition and resistance on the part of the delegates of South Carolina and Georgia, who declared that their States would not come into the Union with a prohibition or restriction in the Con¬ stitution on the privilege of importing slaves. A warm debate arose on the subject* which terminated in a commitment of this section to a committee of one member from each State; and on the suggestion of Mr. Gouverneur Morris, tne other section, requir¬ ing a two-thirds vote for the passage of a navigation act, was also committed to the same committee. He is reported, in Mr. Madison’s Debates of the Convention, to have said* very significantly, in submitting his suggestion to refer the two sections to the same committee: “These things may form a bargain between the northern and southern States.” Here, then, we have the germ of the bargain which was afterwards formally con¬ cluded. The committee to which the two sections were committed, reported to strike out the first of the sections as it originally stood, and to insert “ that the migration or importation of such persons as the several States, now existing, shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited, prior to the year 1800, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such migration or importation at a rate not exceeding the average of the duties laid on imports;” and they recommended, at the same time, that the other section, restrain¬ ing the passage of navigation laws except by a vote of two-thirds of both Houses, be stricken out. When the report of the committee was taken up for consideration, Gen. Pinckney, of South Carolina , moved to strike out the words “ the year 1800,” as the year limiting the importation of slaves, and to insert “ the year 1808.” Mr. Gorham, of Massachusetts , seconded the motion. It was opposed by Mr. Madison, who de-. dared that the term of twenty years from the adoption of the Constitution, thus asked, for the privilege of importing slaves, would produce all the mischiefs of an unlimited liberty to import them. The motion was, nevertheless, carried in the affirmative, the- three New England States, Massachusetts New Hampshire and Connecticut voting with South Carolina , Georgia, North Carolina and Maryland, for it, and the three i 24 middle States, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware voting with Virginia, against it. Thus was consummated the first part of the bargain which secured to the extreme .southern States, (for Virginia and Maryland had long since prohibited the importation by their own laws,) the privilege of importing slaves for the term of twenty years. It then remained to confirm the other part of the bargain, which was to enure to the benefit of the eastern States. When that part of the report recommending the striking out the section which required the vote of two-thirds of both Houses of Congress to pass a navigation law, was taken up, Mr. Charles Pinckney, one of the delegates of South Carolina, moved to postpone it in favor of the following proposition submitted by that no act of the legislature for the purpose of regulating the commerce of the United States with foreign powers or among the several States, shall be passed with¬ out the assent of two-thirds of the members of each Houser All the other delegates of South Carolina, Gen. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Mr. Jno. Rutledge and Mr. Pierce Butler, earnestly opposed this motion; declaring, at the same time, that “ it was the true interest of the southern States to have no regulation of commerce by Congress ■and placing their vote expressly on the ground of concession to the eastern States, “ in consideration of their liberal conduct towards the views of South Carolina ” in regard to the importation ol slaves. The motion to postpone the report of the committee in favor of Air. Charles Pinckney’s proposition, or in other words, the principle for which the southern States had hitherto contended, of subjecting the exercise of the power to regulate commerce by Congress to the restriction of a two-thirds vote, was then rejected; South Carolina voting with Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut and the three middle States, against it, and Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina and Georgia, voting for it. After this decision upon the motion of Mr. Pinckney, which was regarded as the test question, the report of the committee recommending the striking out the sec¬ tion in relation to the passage of navigation laws by a two-thirds vote, was agreed to without division; and the bargain, as it was called by Mr. Gouverneur Morris, between the extreme northern and the extreme southern States, was finally concluded on both ■sides, under the lead ol South Carolina on the one hand, and of Massachusetts on the other. Such is the rise, progress, and termination of one of the most remarkable transactions in the history ol the formation of the Constitution. Massachusetts , with her new En¬ gland sisters, deliberately yielded to South Carolina and Georgia the privilege of import¬ ing slaves for twenty years; and South Carolina, in consideration of the boon, yielded to Massachusetts and New England, against the consent of all the other southern States, the unfettered power of regulating commerce by a mere majority vote in Congress; a power to which all the protective tariff's, which are now so bitterly complained of and denounced by my honorable friend from South Carolina, (Mr. McDuffie,) as “legisla¬ tive plunder,” owe their constitutional origin. The bargain, founded upon mutual equivalents thus given and received, was, as we have seen, solemnly made and ratified; and the high contracting parties are now called on, by every obligation of good faith and loyalty, to abide by and fulfil it—Massachusetts, on her part, to refrain from any inter¬ ference with an institution of the southern States which she threw the doors of the Con¬ stitution wide open for the admission and extension of; and South Carolina, on hers, to acquiesce in the exercise by a majority of Congress of a power which she gave up without restriction, against the will and opinions of all the other States of the south. The good understanding thus brought about in the convention between Sou h Carolina ■and Massachusetts, not only controlled the arrangement of the particular questions I have referred to, but, unless a very interesting paper, which has been long known to me, is mistaken in its information, produced a general unison of views between them, which led to other very important alterations in the Constitution as it then stood. The paper to which I allude is a memorandum by Mr. Jefferson of a conversation between himself ■and Mr. George Mason, one of the delegates of Virginia in the Federal Convention, made at the time of the conversation, which took place only two or three years after the adoption of the Constitution. As the name and character of George Mason may not be 25 t familiar to some of the members of the Senate, I beg leave to tell them who and what he was. He was one of the most remarkable men of an age which abounded in great men and superior spirits. Mr. Jefferson has said of him—“ he was a man of the first order of wisdom among those who acted on the theatre of the Revolution.” He was firmly re¬ publican in his feelings and principles, and particularly jealous of Executive power. He was warmly attached to the rights and sovereignty of the States, and constantly sensitive in regard to the interests of what he called the “staple States.” These opinions carried his mind strongly in favor of every practicable limitation on the power and influence of the Executive Department, and in favor also of some constitutional security against the- abuse of the powers of Congress, in cases where the interests of the “staple States” were supposed to be particularly concerned. The original draught of the Constitution, as- it was prepared by the committee of detail, having undergone some important alterations in these respects, in its progress through the Federal Convention, he finally refused his signature to the Constitution, as a member of that body, and subsequently exerted all his influence in the Convention of Virginia to prevent its ratification there. In the conversation with Mr. Jefferson, recorded in the memorandum to which I have referred, George Mason stated that “ the Constitution, as agreed to till a fortnight before the convention rose, was such an one as he would have set his hand and heart to.” It contained the principle of ineligibility of the President after a first term, disqualification of Senators and Representatives to be appointed to office during the term for which they were elected, and the requisition of a two-thirds vote in the passage of navigation laws.. In this stage, it was proposed to give to Congress the power to prohibit or restrain the importation of slaves. The memorandum, speaking in the person of George Mason, then proceeds: “ This disturbed the two southernmost States, who knew that Congress ’would immediately suppress the importation of slaves. Those two States, therefore, struck up a bargain with the three New England States, if they would join to admit slaves for some years, the two southernmost States would join in changing the clause which required two-thirds of the legislature in any vote. It was done. These articles were changed accordingly ;” and “ under the coalition ” thus brought about, the memo¬ randum, still speaking in the person of George Mason, continues, “ the great principles of the Constitution were changed in the last days of the convention.” The account here given of the bargain or arrangement between the three New Eng¬ land States, and the two southernmost States, in regard to the importation of slaves, and the power of regulating commerce, is fully sustained by the narrative I have already pre¬ sented, from Mr. Madison’s Debates of the Convention, of the particulars of that trans¬ action. How far the same understanding, or “ coalition,” as it is styled in the memo¬ randum to which I have referred, may have had its influence on other parts of the Con¬ stitution, I am not prepared to say. Certain it is, that the principles particularly re¬ ferred to by Mr. Mason, and to which he attached so high an importance, were all changed, and excluded from the Constitution, within the last two or three weeks of the sitting of the convention ; the ineligibility of the President after a first term, and the disqualification of members of Congress to be appointed to office during the periods for which they were elected, as well as the constitutional restriction upon the exercise of the power of Congress to regulate commerce. In recalling these important and instructive proceedings, connected with our early constitutional history, I have had no purpose to cast reproach any where. Mv wish has been, rather, by holding up to the two distinguished States, who have been so un¬ happily arrayed against each other in the course of this long debate, the example of the good understanding and “mutual deference and concession,” which prevailed between them in laying the foundations of the Constitution—to bring back, with the recollections of the past, some portion of the fraternal spirit of their fathers. Virginia was strongly opposed, as we have seen from her votes in the convention, to both branches of the com¬ promise which then took place—to extending the period for the importation of slaves, a* well as to the removal of the restriction upon the exercise of the power to regulate com¬ merce. Upon this last point, she had the steady support of your own State, Mr. Pre- i 26 .sident, (Mr. Mangum, of North Carolina, was in the chair.) North Carolina.and Vir¬ ginia both attached so much importance to this principle, that, when they accepted the Constitution, they each did so with an express recommendation of an amendment, de¬ claring that “ no law regulating commerce shall be passed without the consent of two- thirds of the members present in both Houses.” But their views were not adopted; and they now, in a spirit of loyal submission to the constitutional compact as it was established, cheerfully acquiesce in the exercise of the powers actually given to Con¬ gress. No less can be expected, certainly, in all their federal relations and duties, of States, whose potential voices, as we have seen, made the Constitution what it is. My own judgment, I will say frankly, Mr. President, has always been satisfied by the reasons which were given in the convention for not imposing the inconvenient and embarrassing restriction of a two-thirds vote on the exercise of the power to regulate commerce by Congress. Mr. Charles Pinckney, who submitted the proposition, enumerated some four or five distinct geographical interests in the United States, and ar¬ gued that these different interests would be a source of oppressive regulations, if no check to a bare majority should be provided. But the instinctive sagacity and vigorous common sense of Roger Sherman, answered with conclusive force, that this very di¬ versity of interests was, of itself, the best security against abuse, by rendering injurious combinations impracticable, where so many divergent interests were to be united in a scheme of injustice. Mr. Madison, giving a practical development to the same idea, re¬ ferred to the difference of interests among the northern and middle States themselves, to the interior agricultural interest even in those which were most commercial, and finally to the accession of new States in the West, which would be mainly agricultural, as fur¬ nishing, (in connexion with the checks and controls existing in the structure and organi¬ zation of the Government itself,) every reasonable security against the abuse 01 the power by a majority of the two Houses of Congress. The practical security, resulting from these diversified interests, is one of the most important features in our extended federal system. If there were but two great opposing interests, danger might be apprehended from their collision. But this is not the case. There is, even in the Northern States, the navigating interest, aud the interest of the fisheries, as well as the great agricultural interest diffused every where, to balance the interest of the manufacturing class. And, between the old geographical divisions of the North and the South, there is now the great mediating power of the West, to which Mr. Madison so fondly looked, to preserve the peace and maintain the equilibrium of our system. I have been always struck, Mr. President, with a sagacious remark of Voltaire, during his residence in England, on the effects produced by the number and diversity of religious denominations there. “ If one religion only were allowed in England,” he says, “ the Government would possibly become arbitrary; if there were but two, the people would cut each others’ throats ; but, as there are such a rqultitude, they all live happy and in peace.” Does not the number of diversified interests, spread through our great republican confederacy, afford a similar security for the mutual ob¬ servance of moderation and justice, and for the peace and harmony of our political sys¬ tem ? That diversity of interests, in which the honorable Senator from South Carolina, (Mr. McDuffie,) sees the certain source of oppression and injustice in the operations of our common Government, the profound philosophy of Edmund Burke, considered the high¬ est security of general freedom. “ These opposed and conflicting interests,” he said, “ interpose a salutary check to all precipitate resolutions,” making “ deliberation a mat¬ ter, not of choice, but of necessity ;” and “ all change a subject of compromise which naturally begets moderation,” and they “render the headlong exertions of arbitrary power, in th efew or the many , forever impracticable.” To sum up the whole in his magnifi¬ cent language, “ it is this combination and opposition of interests, this action and coun¬ teraction of parts, which, in the natural and political world, from the reciprocal struggle Vf discordant powers, draws forth the harmony of the universe.” Or, as the great 27 •philosophical poet of England has expressed it in lines which embody the spirit and ^genius, as they reflect with the truth of nature, the image of our American Union, Tis jarring interests, of themselves create, The according music of a well mixed state; Such is the world’s great harmony that springs, From order, Union, full consent of things. I have, then, Mr. President, no fear for the duration or the practical blessings of our political Union, if it shall be left to the natural operation of its constituent elements, however diversified or heterogeneous those elements may be. The father of his country, in a passage of his farewell address, which has been already referred to in this debate' and which, to my mind, never fails to bring with it the sacredness and solemnity of in¬ spiration, has shown how mutually dependent and indispensably necessary to each other are the various parts of the confederacy. The very diversities in their geographical po¬ sition and industrious pursuits, are but additional bonds of union, making them mutual customers for the supply of each other’s wants, instead of jealous and interfering rivals. When we look, too, upon the maps of the country, tied together as are its most distant parts by so many arteries of internal communication, natural and artificial, it is impos¬ sible to resist the conviction that Providence intended it, in all its extent, to be the habi¬ tation of one great and united people. It grates, therefore, most painfully upon the ear, to hear suggestions from any quarter, whether hypothetical or minatory, that such an Union, founded m nature, cemented by common interests, and consecrated by sympa¬ thies and recollections of the loftiest character, can, in any event, be abandoned, to give place to some spurious and unnatural scheme of separate confederacies. One consola¬ tion, however, never fails toresultfrom all these suggestions—that every scheme brought forward encounters, in nature itself, some inyincible obstacle to its practical accomplish- Let us take, for example, the hypothetical dismemberment of the Union into three sep¬ arate confederacies, brought forward, in the way of argument, or warning by the Senator from South Carolina, (Mr. McDuffie.) He presented us, I think, a manufacturing confed¬ eracy, to consist of the eastern and middle States; a farming confederacy, of the western and northwestern States; and a planting confederacy, of the southern and southwestern Mates. 1 he first observation which occurs upon this arrangement is, that the honorable •senator puts the southwestern States, lying upon the lower parts of the Mississippi, into he same confederacy with the southern Atlantic States, and separates them from the western and northwestern States lying upon the upper parts of that great river and on 'he Ohio. But nature evidently puts her veto upon such an arrangement. The western nd northwestern States can never consent that the mouth of the Mississippi, the great outlet for their productions, shall be under the control of a foreign and independent com- aunity, levying tribute upon their commerce, and having it in their power greatly to mbarrass, if not wholly to interrupt it. History, too, adds her testimony that such a tate of things would never be submitted to, for it informs us that, while the discussions ;ere pending with Spam respecting the navigation of the Mississippi, under General Vashington s administration, the people of Kentucky, dissatisfied at the delays of the egotiation, openly threatened to withdraw from the Union, and to assert by force their ght to the free navigation of that river, if it was not speedily obtained by treaty. It iust, then be considered as an established law of nature, that all the States lying on the aters of the Mississippi must and will be parts of one and the same sovereignty; and may be added, m the language of the valedictory address of Washington, that the only ficient security they can have for the permanent enjoyment of its outlet to the ocean, ee from foreign obstruction or control, is in “ the weight, influence, and maritime rength of the Atlantic side of the Union, directed by an indissoluble community of in¬ rest as one nation. 1 he honorable Senator from South Carolina, then, must strike e southwestern States from his projet of a separate southern confederacy. ZV°° k t0 v tlie ° ther eXtr ? m ™ y ° f this su PP 03ed confederacy, on its northern )nuer. Where is Virginia to go? The honorable Senator, I presume, proposes to •28 include her in his planting confederacy. But can Virginia ever be separated from Mary-f land lying as they do on the shores of the same Chesapeake, and using in common the waters of that great estuary ? Nature forbids that they should ever be disjoined: and the very necessities of their position forced them into a partial union , by means of the compact they entered into for regulating their common jurisdiction and navigation upon the waters of the Chesapeake and Potomac, previous to the formation of the general union of the States. The partial union established by that compact may be considered, indeed, as the germ of the Federal Union, which was soon afterwards formed : and nei¬ ther Maryland, nor Virginia, I am persuaded, will ever consent to be separated from that o-reat confederacy, of which they may be said, in some sort, to have laid the foundation, by the example and effect of their partial union. Maryland, as my honorable friend before me (Mr. Pearce, Senator of Maryland,) well knows, was a rib taken out of the side of Virginia, and “ they twain are one flesh.” So, I trust, they will ever remain. If we trace the natural dependencies which connect other States with one another, we shall find that Pennsylvania is tied to Maryland by the Susquehanna, as New Jersey is to Pennsylvania, on the one side, by the Delaware, and to New York, on the other, by similar and even more necessary connexions. New York and Pennsylvania are msep- erably connected, bv the strongest ties, both of nature and of interest, with the western States on the lakes and the Ohio; and when we come to look to Virginia, on that side, she is in one-half of her territory, a western State by her geographical position, and whe¬ ther we regard physical or moral ties, she can never be separated from her own offspring, Kentucky and the noble States of the northwest, who are at the same time her proudest jewels I think, then, it is demonstrable, Mr. President, that the central States of this Union" on both sides of the Alleghanies, including the great valley of the Mississippi, are tied together by natural bonds which neither the folly nor the wickedness of man can ever dissolve ; and if any separation were ever to take place, it could only occur at the extremities, where the centrifugal tendencies which may be occasionally manifested will always, in the end, be controlled by the instincts of an American nationality , as well as by a sober calculation of consequences , , , But let us suppose, for a moment, that the honorable Senator s speculation of a southern and southwestern confederacy, which, in the zeal of his eloquence and the ex¬ citement of his imagination, he has painted as an elysium on earth, did not encounter invincible obstacles in nature, and were, in truth, capable of being reduced into practice, what would be the situation of its different parts in regard to that free trade, which is to pour such uncounted blessings into its lap. By free trade, the honorable Senator, doubtless, means free trade in cotton and the returns for it in British manufactures ; and oven that trade would not be perfectly free, for some duties must be levied to defray the expenses of this new confederacy. But what sort of free trade would Virginia and North Carolina, as members of the new confederacy, enjoy for their tobacco and their flour The former staple is subjected to duties in England averaging from one to two thousand per cent., and the latter is virtually excluded by her corn laws. What guaranty can the honorable Senator offer that these oppressive duties and restrictions will be abol- : hed f It is also evident that the Senator from South Carolina has looked only to the trade of the new confederacy through its Atlantic border. How will it be along that extended inland frontier, which will separate the supposed southern and southwestern confederacy from the bordering confederacies on the north and the west? There we now have the most active and unlimited free trade, under the sure guarantees of our constitu¬ tional union But when the supposed separation into distinct and independent confed¬ eracies shall take place, this unbounded and most fruitful free trade we now enjoy with the other States—exempt from the slightest restriction or burden of any sort—must give olace to jealous and probably retaliatory and hostile tariffs on both sides. Has the honorable Senator taken this into the account of the blessings of the new confederacy? Has he counted the cost of the army of patroles and custom-house officers along the extended inland frontier to which I have referred, (open at every point to illicit trade,) which would become absolutely necessary to secure the execution of the revenue laws 29 Ip^on both sides of the line ? Has he thought of the constant danger of border collisions which would attend this state of things, and of the consequent wars and large and bur¬ densome military establishments which would probably grow out of it, extinguishing, by the necessary provision for their expense, the last remnant of free trade? .But laying these things, grave and momentous as they are, out of view for the pre¬ sent, by what sort of tenure, I ask the honorable Senator, would the new confederacy enjoy that free trade in cotton and its returns from the workshops of Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham, which seems to have entered mainly into his consideration. Has he not seen what the British Government has recently done to discourage the productions of slave labor, by laying a heavy discriminating duty on slave-grown sugar? How long will it be before the same policy may lead them to lay heavy discriminating duties on slave-grown cotton; and what would become, then, of the whole fabric of free trade which the Senator has so laboriously constructed for the supposed southern and south¬ western planting confederacy ? Is the absolute and invaluable free trade between the Iwenty-six powerful and flourishing communities which compose this Union, and held by the immutable tenure of the Constitution , to be exchanged for such a delusive free trade as I have shown would be the heritage of the new confederacy—a free trade preter¬ miting entirely some of the most important staples of the country, which would still re¬ main subject to the burthen of the heaviest rate of duties abroad—held, in its only sub¬ stantial branch, at the will and caprice of a rival foreign Government—and in all its vast, inland operations, oppressed, if not destroyed, by the jealous and retaliatory regulations of border confederacies ? The vast importance of the interior free trade, established and secured by our present happy Union, cannot be too highly appreciated. The hon¬ orable Senator from South Carolina will see that his favorite authority (Adam Smith) considers the “ freedom of interior commerce ,” even within the narrow limits of that island, “ as one of the principal causes of the prosperity of Great Britain.”* How in¬ finitely greater must be its fruitful results in such an empire as this, embracing in its wide extent almost every variety of soil, climate and industry known to man. It is, in truth, the chief and most operative cause of that wonderful and unparalleled develop¬ ment of wealth and industry, which the progress of our country has already exhibited to the admiration of the world. What a magnificent vision of free trade, Mr. President, is destined to be realized, even in the short period of the life of man, by the vast interior commerce of this country, if we remain, as we will and must remain, an united people. It requires “ no angel to lift the curtain from the rising glories of our country,” nor does it demand “ all the san¬ guine credulity of youth, and all the fervid glow of enthusiasm” to make us believe in our destinies. They rest upon the established and well ascertained laws of our progress, and are vouched by the sober and unerring rules of political arithmetic. There are those now living who will see this noble country of ours peopled by one hundred millions of happy and industrious inhabitants, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, citizens of twenty-six and more independent republican communities, which protect them in their lives, liberties and property, and yet all under the-guardianship of a common government, which secures to them the privilege of a free and unrestricted circulation and exchange of all the productions of their industry and skill, without the slightest let or impediment, from one to another of the States that compose this great confederacy of Republics, embracing within their limits, every variety of industrious pursuits and natural advantages that can form the basis of a rich, flourishing and in¬ exhaustible commerce. Such a spectacle was never before exhibited in the history of man. And yet there are those now living who will see it, if we are true to ourselves, 5k> the memory of our fathers, and to the just hopes of our posteritv. * Wealth of Nations, Book V, chap. 2. I ; : -'/ 1 • ' ' ' . . ■ v\ • •v v'A*lV v 'J ' " ■ p • • v •• •; \ ^ v,' .' • -• ' . ■ •* . Opinions of the Tariff and Free Trade Candidates for the Presidency. MARK THE DIFFERENCE ! MR. POLK. MR. CLAY. Ashland, June 29,1844. Dear Sir: I have received your favor, stating that our political opponents represent ine as being a friend of protec¬ tion at the North, and for free trade at the South ; and you desire an expression of my opinion, under my own hand, for the purpose of correcting this misrepresentation. I am afraid that you will find the effort vain to correct misrepresenta¬ tions of me. Those who choose to understand my opinions can have no difficulty in clearly comprehending them. I have repeatedly expressed them as late as this spring, and several times in answer to letters from Pennsylvania. My opinions, such as they are, have been recently quite as freely expressed at the South as I ever uttered them at the North. I have every where maintained , that in adjusting a Tariff for revenue, discriminations ought to he made for Pro¬ tection : THAT THE TARIFF OF 1842 HAS OPERATED MOST beneficially, and that I AM UTTERLY OPPOSED TO ITS REPEAL. These opinions were announced by me at public meetings in Alabama, Georgia, Charleston in bouth Carolina, North Carolina, and in Virginia. I am, respectfully, your friend and obed t serv Winchester, May 29, 1843. To the People of Tennessee: The object which I had in proposing to Governor Jones, at Carrollville, on the 12lh of April last, that we should each write out and publish our views and opinions on the subject of the Tariff, was, that our respective positions might be dis¬ tinctly known and understood by the People. That my opin¬ ions were already fully and distinctly known, I could not doubt. I had steadily during the period I was a Re¬ presentative in Congress, been opposed to a Protec¬ tive Policy, as my recorded votes and published speeches prove. Since 1 retired from Congress I had held the same opinions. In the present canvass for Governor I HAD AVOWED MY OPPOSITION TO THE TARIFF ACT OF THE LAST WHIG CONGRESS, as being highly protective in its character, and not designed by its authors as a revenue measure. I had avowed my opinion in my pub¬ lic speeches that the interests of the country, and especially of the producing and exporting States—REQUIRED ITS REPEAL, and the restoration of the principles of the Com¬ promise act of 1833. F JAMES K. POLK. Mr. Fred. J. Cope. 2Sth Congress,' Is/ Session. Rep. No. 306. Ho. of Reps. REVENUE. [To accompany bill H. R. No. 213.] April 4, 1844. Ordered to be printed, and that 10,000 extra copies be also printed* Mr. J. R. Ingersoll, from the minority of the Committee of Ways and Means, made the following REPORT: The subscribers, entertaining views essentially different from those of the majority of the Committee of Ways and Means, respectfully submit the following, as a minority report: They believe that any modification of the tariff policy is, at this time, unnecessary ; and that the bill which has been prepared cannot fail, if it should become a law, to be injurious to the best interests of the country. They proceed to offer some of the reasons which have led them to these conclusions. Little more than eighteen months have elapsed since the present law went into operation. A change of system, after so short-lived an experi¬ ment, could scarcely find a precedent in any course of legislation. The interests which are involved in the revenue laws of a populous commercial country, are extensive and various. A system once established implies not indeed absolute permanence, but something like duration, (unless it works amiss,) as opposed to early and capricious alterations. It affects, in a greater or less degree, all classes of citizens, and it requires of a large portion of them active conformity to its rules. All those who are immediately concerned in commerce have a direct interest in them and an almost daily recurrence to their provisions. They form a contract which, while it lasts, is absolutely inviolable, and which cannot fluctuate frequently, and in the absence of adequate cause, without producing much inconvenience, and, in all probability, serious mischief. A revenue system extends beyond the population of the country by which it is adopted, and involves, in a degree, the concerns of foreign nations, and the individuals of whom they are composed. These last, it is true, have no perfect right to complain of any caprice or fickleness in legislation, which is not guarded against by express treaty arrangement. But respect abroad is not to be overlooked, any more than convenience at home; and both may be for¬ feited by extravagant fluctuations, which have no inducement but mere party preference or love of change. Blair & Rives,printers. 2 Rep. No. 306. Stability is of itself a source of credi.t arid advantage. A course of trade soon accommodates itself to existing regulations. Wiser and better ones cannot always be substituted with safety. Acquiescence in those that are known, and have become familiar, is more natural and easy, as well as more profitable, than sudden and compelled efforts of conformity, even to improvements that are new and strange. In the proposed pro¬ visions, it is believed nothing is contained which even in the abstract can be regarded as beneficial. They are liable, therefore, to the double ob¬ jection of intrinsic demerit, and shifting and uncertain legislation. At the time when Congress passed the tariff law which is now in force, some measure of relief was called for by an embarrassed treasury and a suffering country. Both were in a condition which no ordinary efforts of skill and resolution were adequate to relieve. As soon as the gradual abatement of duties provided for by the law of the 2d of March, 1833, had reached a certain point of depression, those who had in charge the super¬ intendence of the finances were compelled to acknowledge the inadequacy of the revenue to meet the ordinary wants of the Government. In the annual report on the state of the finances, made December 10, 1840, a deficiency was estimated for the year 1842, of five millions of dollars. Disbursements in 1838, it was said, had amounted (independently of the redemption of treasury notes, amounting to $5,603,503 19) to $33,851,- 935 15. The expected deficiency was ascertained by taking the year 1838 as a standard for importations also. The alternative presented for meeting the apprehended deficiency was a large reduction of expenditures, or an extensive modification of the existing tariff. An income from im¬ ports was not hoped for beyond “ ten or eleven millions of dollars yearly.” This, with any collateral aid from all other’sources, could not be expected to approach “ seventeen or eighteen millions yearly,” to which amount it was intimated that the appropriations might be curtailed. Although the Secretary of the Treasury referred to explanations which he had formerly given in favor of the first branch of his alternative—reduced expenditures, which might, in his opinion, probably prove sufficient to meet the emer¬ gency, if the reduction should be pushed vigorously : yet he naturally anticipated a want of coincidence with him in opinion on the part of Con¬ gress. He was about to depart from the cares of Government, and, to¬ gether with the Administration which he served, would soon leave the responsibilities and the labors of active retrenchment to other hands. An adoption was suggested of some permanent change in the tariff, which was deemed not loo early at the short session, which was to close the offi- cial duties of the individuals then in power, in order that full notice of its character might be given, and that the different interests most affected by it should have time to become gradually adjusted to its provisions. The head of the department offered to present the results of examinations, which, he stated, he had made, at any moment either House of Con¬ gress should express a wish to that effect. These were the suggestions of a former Administration, not fully developed, but sufficiently indicative of necessities, without active provision to meet them. No reliance was placed on the theory that low duties would produce large revenue. Duties had fallen to a standard which was low enough for a touchstone to the theory, and its best friends ceased, in the day of need, to be practically its advo¬ cates. Imposts, it was obvious, must be raised to a much higher rate. 3 Rep. No. 306. before the Government could be supplied with means of economical or necessary expenditure. Wisdom was taught at length by actual suffering, although a deaf ear had been turned to its warnings, when they were littered only by the experience of other nations, and by observation and intelligence at home. Truer principles of political economy were forced upon us when want knocked at the door of the treasury, and the country, possessing sufficient importations, but inadequate duties, saw before it the sole means of relief, and admitted on all sides the necessity of resorting to it. The established and well-understood rule was verified and con¬ firmed, that while supply is produced by demand, and a corresponding ability to pay for it, neither demand nor supply, nor both together, will create support for the Government. Prices and quantities of commo¬ dities imported are regulated, not by the relative or positive amounts of duties, nor even by the absence of them altogether. They are influenced only by the urgency of the desire of the people to possess the given arti¬ cles, coupled with the means they enjoy to purchase them. Importations in 1839 averaged, upon the mass of dutiable articles, about double those of 1840 ; yet, “from and after the 31st day of December, one thousand eight hundred and thirty-nine, another tenth part” (of the excess beyond twenty per cent.) was “ deducted.” Importations fell off largely, though not to so great an extent between 1841 and 1842, and yet half the residue of the excess was deducted before the commencement of the latter year, and all of it before it was half expired. England does not keep wine out of the country by exacting double its value from it in passing through the custom-house; she does not exclude tobacco by a duty of twenty-four hun¬ dred per cent., simply because her people want it and are willing to pay for it. If her regulations respecting grain and flour are nearly prohibi¬ tory as to those articles from the United States, it is because they can generally be procured from her colonies or her own soil, and farther sup¬ ply is not required. Importations are affected not by imposts, even when they approach an amount that appears to be extravagant, but by other and independent causes. Revenue, therefore, is increased or diminished by the standard of duties as long as they are kept within a limit which experiment alone can satisfactorily ascertain and establish. It is unwise to arrest the experiment while it is harmlessly working out its own re¬ sults. To begin it anew is to lose all the benefit of acquired experience, if its lessons have not already become profitable by manifesting practical errors, and obedience to them is not the indulgence of party hostility, but an exercise of patriotic duty. It may be added, as an obvious truth, that demand and consequent supply are influenced by the character, cheapness, and quantity of domestic productions, as well as by the ability to pay for those of foreign growth or fabric, when they are either out of the reach of competition, or objects of preference and desire from any other cause. A new Administration could not hesitate to confirm the necessity of resorting to additional duties in order to meet the calls of the treasury. It unfolded much greater wants than had been admitted before, if any had really been admitted, except in possible anticipation. A deficit now, (June 3, 1841,) was estimated to be provided for in that and the follow¬ ing year of $16,088,215 18. A considerable part of this deficiency, the necessary result of previous arrangements, must occur soon after the change of Administration. 4 Rep. No. 306. From the 1st of June to the 31st of August, 1841, the demand s ofthe public service were, ----- -$11,151,693 37 The ways and means to accrue under then existing laws, 5,900,305 07 Leaving a present deficit of. To which being added, as necessary to be kept in the treasury to meet any emergencies of the public ser¬ vice, . An aggregate deficiency appeared for more immediate demands of. 5,251,388 30 4,000,000 00 9,251,388 30 Other explanations and developments were brought to public view. Although for a period of twenty one years before 1837 the revenues had uniformly exceeded the expenditures, yet for the four subsequent years an excess of expenditure over current revenue appeared, of $31,314,034 20. It was officially announced that these expenditures had absorbed the surplus in the treasury and the outstanding debts due to the United States. Thus, on the 4th of March, 1841, the individuals who had succeeded to the hopes and cares of Government, found a treasury exhausted of its means, and subject to heavy and immediate liabilities. These were not their only embarrassments. No provision had been made to supply ex¬ hausted means or to provide for immediate liabilities, unless arrangements could be so called which would only contribute to farther exhaustion and deeper responsibility. Above all, as the event soon fearfully proved, the treasury was bereft of its credit, and for a considerable time was unable to avail itself of the wretched consolation which alone was left to it, of bor¬ rowing anew upon any terms and at any sacrifice. A spectacle was exhibit¬ ed, which, it is hoped, never can be repeated of this Government—disap¬ pointed at home and derided abroad in its abortive efforts to beg or buy assistance from the hands of friends and strangers. If the present tariff had performed no other office than to rescue the nation, a§ it did at once from its discredited condition, and to restore at least its palmy honors in the eyes of a scornful world, it ought to be regarded as merit enough to save it from threatened destruction. The treasury of the United States was left, as we have said, burdened with a debt, incurred in time of peace, and without any adequate re¬ sources for its immediate need, except the authority granted by law to in¬ crease its liabilities. An enlargement of revenue as far as practicable, without imposing unreasonable burdens upon commerce, and a reduction of expenditures within the limits of strict economy, were urged as early and effectual measures to be provided by Congress. Legislation prompt¬ ly followed to an extent as great as was safe and practicable. A large class of articles, before free, was subjected to duty. Other provisions were made to increase the revenue from customs, for the immediate emer¬ gency ; and inquir ies were set on foot with a \iew to still more effectual arrangements at a moment as early as might be consistent with a due re¬ gard to all the interests which were involved. The year 1842 opened with an estimated expenditure (including $7,000,000 for the redemption of treasury notes) of - $32,791,010 78 Which, after deducting estimated net receipts, - - 18,572,440 10 Left to be provided for - 14,218,570 68 I 5 Rep. No. 306. Besides the amount required for the surveys of the public lands and the compensation of the officers employed in that branch of the public service, payable out of the proceeds of tile sales of the lands themselves. A large proportion of this heavy amount was wanted too soon to allow the tardy movements of legislation in enacting proper tariff regulations, after needful information should be received from authentic sources, both official and otherwise. More summary relief was recommended. It was to be sought in an extension of the term within which the residue not yet taken of the loan already authorized should be redeemable, amounting to $6,500,000, and in the reissue of treasury notes previously authorized by law, amounting to $5,000,000 more. These humiliating expedients' were regarded as necessary evils, and as such they were reluctantly re¬ sorted to. They had become unavoidable, by a course of policy to which those who w r cre about to adopt them were strangers; the evils of which they could not hesitate to remedy, but could not fail to deplore. An amount not inconsiderable was still left of actual liability at the moment, besides the prospect of redemption at a future day. Both were to be looked to, with a view to the immediate relief and permanent support of the Government. The necessary supply was to be derived from imposts on foreign articles imported, and these were to be selected with regard to the actual wants of the Government, and a proper economy in its adminis¬ tration. \ Thus far all parties would probably have united in sentiment and deter¬ mination. Burdens imposed by law T upon the treasury must be by law re¬ moved. Their removal must be effected, not by omitting to reduce the debt or check it* augmentation, by permitting it to become permanent, or by new temporary expedients, which, postponing merely the'day of pay¬ ment, would not finally avert the necessity or change the character of the evil. Nor could the removal of these burdens be wisely effected, if at all, by any system of direct taxation. It was not seriously thought of. With scarcely an exception, all who have been entrusted with the direction of public affairs have united in the preference of imposts, as the safest, easiest, and most equitable method of providing revenue. In the adjustment of their details, difference of opinion becomes not only wide, but hopelessly irreconcilable. The time will surely come when it will be matter of difficult belief, that intelligent minds, directing their attention tow ards a practical and familiar subject, should have drawn from the same indispu¬ table facts, plainly and constantly before them, conclusions directly op¬ posite to each other. It will appear yet more strange that conflicting theories should so have been infused into the same palpable and practical truths, that they have assumed distinct and dissimilar shapes and colors to different visions; and that effects w hich, by some, had been considered the necessary and obvious result of an efficient cause, w r ere by others re¬ garded as a separate and independent self-sustaining existence. Duties are lowered, (for example,) and prices remain the same or rise, while revenues ebb towards positive and distressing deficiency. Duties are reinstated, and prices immediately fall, while the tide of revenue soon turns to flood. One set of politicians insist that if the abatement had not been made the consequences would have been still more disastrous, and they require a repetition of the experiment in the face of existing evidence. Another set merely desire that the practical workings should not be dis- ( turbed to gratify a disappointed theory. Without attempting to reconcile 6 Rep. No. 306. or account for differences thus absolute, we proceed to vindicate the prin¬ ciples on which the tariff was framed, and to justify its practical operation. These principles would be partially violated, and this operation would be totally perverted, by the proposed modification of it. It has been shown that the wants of the treasury were pressing, and that the law was passed with those wants in view, and in the belief that it would provide for them. It was recommended by the fiscal department of the Government. The purpose stated—a provision of supply for the treasury—was inducement sufficient for a measure of the kind. Revenue was required, and this was the prolific source from which it was to be derived. While the Treasury Department, in the exercise of its especial duty, protected the finances and took care to provide for public expendi¬ ture. as one responsible branch of the executive, the whole superintending authority of the nation was bound to look beyond the single motive sug¬ gested by diminished resources and urgent claims. The collection of revenue might be made burdensome or light. In its application, it was to be tempered to the condition of the people. No particular class ol indivi¬ duals or description of interests was to be crushed by inexorable and in- discriminating exaction, even if by such a course the maximum of revenue could be obtained. On the other hand, if, while avoiding oppressive bur¬ dens everywhere, particular interests could be fostered, the treasury re¬ plenished, the whole country benefited, and no principle disturbed or right infringed, Government would he indulging in the exercise of its most salutary powers. Framed for the promotion of the general welfare* it would thus exhibit some of its wisest, happiest, and most beneficent influences. Taxation would become oppressive to nonb, beneficial to many, and convenient to all. In the suggestion by the department of a plan oi finance, which was revised by the proper committee of the House of Representatives, and adopted by the last Congress, these important objects appear to have been kept in view. Certainly nothing was contemplated which could savor of free trade. In that phrase, the undersigned perceive only another word for the absence of all law, which is necessarily the forerunner of ruin. In the financial policy of other countries, the term was for a long time used to mislead the unwary, while the reality was avoided with characteristic sagacity. It has no existence in the commercial policy of any maritime nation. It is never referred to as worthy of consideration or partial adoption, except with qualifications and definitions, which serve to show that it is without a definite meaning, and that, if left, like other terms, to explain itself, it will only obscure the sense and confound the argument. Looking to practical results, the Congress which passed the present tariff law did so with primary reference to revenue. Such an amount was contemplated, and no more, as might be sufficient for the economical administration of the Government. How judicious was the estimate, or how happy the conjecture, is proved by daily observation and experience. Prediction has been so signally verified, that calculation seems to have been prophecy. It was all, however, in a greater or less degree, experimental. Every measure of the kind must, in the nature of things, partake of that character. So many elements enter into the combination, each of them created or controlled by circumstances which cannot, with certainty, be foreseen, that nothing but the event can stamp the character of the pro- 7 Rep. No. 306. reeding. Never was a moment more favorable for experiment. If the reve¬ nue to be raised should exceed the ordinary necessities of the Government and the peculiar calls for interest on loans, a portion of the principal of debt might be purchased even if not yet strictly redeemable, and treasury notes might be paid off without renewal. To both these objects the surplus might be profitably applied, and the margin was large enough to tranquillize any fears that it would exceed them. If the revenue should fall short of ex¬ pectation and the necessary and immediate wants that it was to supply, convenient and proper objects of taxation remained untouched, which could immediately be brought into requisition. During the year 1843, upwards of twenty-two millions of pounds of coffee were imported into the district of Baltimore alone. If it had paid a moderate duty of two cents a pound, it would have yielded more than two-thirds of all the revenue received at that custom-house. Experience has shown that a duty upon coffee is attended with little or no increase of price to the consumer; and the impression was general that if required by the treasury, it would be just and popular. At an earlier period of the present session, when it was apprehended that more revenue must he provided, and the Treasury Department had announced that there would he a deficiency, a resolution was introduced into the House of Representatives and brought by one of the undersigned, (confident in the just appreciation of his motive,) to the notice of the Committee of Ways and Means, having for its especial ob¬ ject a duty upon this article. The importance of arrangements that should not leave the treasury in a continued state of exhaustion, and that should facilitate an additional enlargement of its means in case of need, will be further appreciated, if it be borne in mind that public affairs were such as to threaten an interruption to the pacific policy of the country. The pro¬ per financial officer significantly invited the attention of Congress to the circumstance, that its condition might he supposed to call for more than ordinary means of defence and security. A grave negotiation was in pro¬ gress w hen the tariff bill was in preparation, and when it was reported; and the final passage of the law and the amicable close of the negotiation were almost precisely simultaneous. While these purposes of revenue were carefully provided for w ith as much, perhaps, of fortunate coincidence as political foreknowledge, other and more than incidental results were anxiously Contemplated. Among the duties which were to be imposed, a sound discretion might be exer¬ cised. It w ould naturally be influenced by an earnest desire to promote the public good. If, in collecting precisely the same amount of revenue, the chief burden could be placed advantageously on one set of commodi¬ ties, and others could, with scarcely less advantage, he partially relieved or totally exempted, there could he no reason for making them all alike the subject of uniform taxation. The whole mass of consumers thoughout the country would pay exactly the same, even if, contrary to expectation and experience, the consequence of judicious duties were to raise the price of the article imported. Two pieces of merchandise, subject, each, to an equal assessment of fifty cents, pay neither more nor less in the aggregate, if one of them be charged with sixty and the other w ith forty. To the treasury, the result is the same, provided the relative extent of importation be unaffected. If the one be a luxury, and the other a necessary of life; if the one be anxiously demanded and yet be not particularly useful, and the other be capriciously neglected and yet deserve to be largely intro- 8 Rep. No. 306. duccd for the convenience of the people,—policy would dictate a resort to the unequal assessment which has been adverted to. These are induce¬ ments independent of domestic competition. If the comparison arise not between the caprice of fashion and the tardy pursuit of reason, but between productions which are necessarily and universally of foreign growth, and such as also spring up and prosper under the labor and skill and genius of our own citizens, motives at least as strong are presented for unequal rates of duty. In the one case, you possess the article and pay its price; 0 in the other, you equally possess the article, and, in paying for it, you re¬ ward honest industry, furnish incentives to ingenuity, dispel the mystery and expose the fraud of foreign charges, secure to agriculture a never-fail¬ ing market for its products, give to commerce employment, and enable it in its true spirit to substitute barter for purchase, and thus to preserve at home the sinews of w r ar and the basis of internal exchange and trade, make the country independent and self-relying in the face of every emer¬ gency, and destroy the last vestige of colonial degradation. These con¬ sequences are subjects of mathematical proof. Other results are believed, by those who have candidly investigated them and traced them to the proper cause, to be no less obvious to the moral sense. If properly ap¬ plied, duties do not increase the price of the article on which they are laid. Whether they do not, in many instances, diminish it, is a question often too much affected by prejudice and passion to be resolved with satisfaction to all who enter the lists of controversy with a partisan spirit. But that the duty is laid, and that the price nevertheless comes down, the history of trade demonstrates, with a certainty as unerring as that which accom¬ panies the postulates of exact science. The curious inquirer is at no loss for an adequate cause. He finds it in the competition between domestic production and foreign trade; in the lessened price abroad; in the improve¬ ment of machinery, which is the effect of myriad-minded energy, and of daring and unshackled freedom of thought, habitually prone to invention, and ever seeking for what is new; and in the restless spirit of a people whose very faults incline them to excel. Without waiting for a demonstrable cause, the practical politician is content to take the effect as he finds it. He leaves to theorists the benefit of speculation, and places his belief in w hat he sees to be true. He knows that experience is the only human source of knowledge, and he adopts all of it that he can derive from others, and unites it with his own. He has ascertained that the necessi¬ ties of the foreign producer to sell are at least as urgent as those of the domestic consumer to buy, and that this necessity is enforced by the in¬ creased duty to an extent which, even if it amount to sacrifice, is prefer¬ able to total loss. The duty is to the foreign producer an additional item in the cost of bringing his goods to market, and he meets the domestic article, which pays no duty, on equal terms, only w hen he takes this addi¬ tional item, together with those of freight and insurance, upon himself. Prices are rendered equal, not by raisi ig those of home manufactures, but by reducing those of imported goods. While prices are lessened, quality is improved. Better machinery, and more skilful, enterprising, and industrious workmen are found at home than abroad. The former neutralizes the advantages of numbers on a scale sometimes of three hun¬ dred to one; and the latter give to every working hour a fulness and a force to which the reluctant labors of European pauperism are, in a great degree, a stranger. 9 Rep. No 306. We have thus glanced at the reasons for discarding uniform or horizon¬ tal duties, and adopting those which discriminate between different kinds of merchandise. The friends of this latter policy maintain with confi¬ dence that it may be exercised without a particle of injury to any single branch of interest or section of the country. If in practice an exception be found, it becomes an admitted evil, which the same friends of the system will, in supportof their own well-tried principles, be the foremost to correct. A uniform scale of duties would be about as wise, and not much more humane, than a uniform scale of punishments, such as we are told one lawgiver did apply to every species of crime. Discrimination, practised with however scrupulous a regard to the interests of all, avoiding, as it may, every sort and degree of mischief, will, it is still objected, unduly enhance the profits of particular descriptions of business. If manufactures be the means of wealth, they are the property of no exclusive class. Accessible to all kinds of persons, their fruits may always he gathered by the hand of enterprise. Steam has almost counteracted, and may readily compete with, the gifts which nature has bestowed on certain parts of the country in the shape of water-power, and all are fairly on a level in their access to this agent of power and source of profit. Were this otherwise, an ob¬ jection, if without other support, cannot justly be urged to the prosperity of those who have hazarded much in confronting sectional hostility and legislative uncertainty; whose premiums must not be inconsiderable, if they are proportioned to the risks they have run ; and whose career may be shortened by causes which are not necessarily connected with sound reason or calm reflection. . . . Statesmen naturally look to the good of the whole country. Discrimi¬ nation developes resources and calls forth energy. In the result, subjects of exportation are provided, and general and diffusive benefit ensues. Does the proprietor of land in the fertile South covet for himself a mono¬ poly of patriotic enterprise? Let him rather share with his distant fellow- citizens in creative faculties ; one description of them being shown in the rich products of a prolific soil, and the other in a luxuriant harvest of nb less prolific human skill and industry. Exports have heretofore been con¬ fined to few articles in variety, though of large extent, and those, until recently, almost purely agricultural. Other productions of the soil, far exceeding in value even the rich crops of the South, are usefully consumed within the country. Large cities and manufacturing districts, if fanned into prosperity by the fostering hand of legislation, will continue to absorb them. An increase of the market will keep pace with the increase of pro¬ duction, if the system continue to be cherished. Let the protecting arm be withdrawn, and a population, which now consumes and pays for the ripe harvests and robust stock of the States that especially produce them, be permitted to fade and wither, and where will another market for them be sought ? Abroad, access is shut out by a sagacious policy, which knows how to prefer and protect its own domestic interests with parental solicitude. At home, whenever a self-destructive course of policy dries up the fountains of remuneration, nothing is left but that the superfluous food shall perish. The memory must be treacherous which does not recall dis¬ tressing proofs of these positions, in the state of things which immediately preceded the enactment of the existing tariff. Exports of domestic produce are an indication of national prosperity. They are marks of fertile soil, or successful industry. They pay debts, 10 I Rep. No 306. give activity to commerce, and secure a return of all that may be de¬ sired for the convenience and enjoyment of life. In the history of Ame¬ rican commerce, it has rarely happened that imports have not largely exceeded exports. I he excess has repeatedly risen to more than sixty millions of dollars. Few exceptions are to be found. The years 1811, 1813, 1821, 1825, 1827, 1830, 1840, and 1842, stand the only instances in the course of half a century when the reverse has been exhibited. If it be asked, why a theory so well established as that which requires a country to receive less than it sends abroad, has been violated with com¬ parative impunity, an answer is found, at least to a certain extent, in the load of State debts, w hich, remaining unpaid, have served, notwithstanding their enormity as a disgrace and an evil, to counteract the ordinary results of excessive importation. It can be checked hereafter with honor and advantage by producing, in gradual increase, articles of export. These have been already much .augmented. They are capable of adding largely to the amount supplied by southern soil, which of itself is quite inadequate. As collateral both to the duty of encouraging the means of exportation and the obligation to discriminate in the selection of dutiable articles, we ought not to overlook the policy of protecting the internal improvements of the country. This is one of the great sources of development. A tariff law> which is the means of collection, and not of distribution, cannot alarm the most scrupulous by giving Government funds to objects of doubtful Federal policy. But it can so apply its provisions as to facilitate both the access of foreign merchandise to innermost regions, and the transportation of the products of the interior to the ocean. When the operations of the law have been fully ascertained, and the correction of errors which can scarcely fail to find their way into minute details, shall be desired, this w ill be an object worthy of consideration. But a sweeping effort of de¬ struction, which would impair revenue, blast the newly-encouraged hopes of domestic industry, and arrest returning prosperity, is quite a different thing. If the country had been found, by the existing law, in a condition of great prosperity; its credit high, its commerce flourishing, its agriculture prosperous, confidence entire, and all the transactions of business*active; and, after eighteen months’ duration, the same law r had left the country in an opposite situation, credit blighted, commerce languishing, agricultural productions lumbering the granaries or perishing in the fields, confidence withheld from friends and neighbors, and business chilled and stagnant,— w r e could not have complained at a change of policy. Coincidences so striking would have justified the belief that they were consequences. It would be time to arrest the growing evil. But wdiat apology can be offered for interposing when nothing but blessings surround us ? From the mo¬ ment the present duties were laid, the stream of prosperity began to flow. Prices fell lower and lower; confidence was infused into all the departments of business ; Government credit rose to a degree almost unprecedented; industry found occupation, and labor reward. Numerous establishments, which had been struck dow n by evil legislation, or had been permitted to lauguish for the w^ant of fostering care, raised their prostrate and droop¬ ing heads, and breathed again. Is this a time to meddle with wholesome laws ? Because they have confirmed the dearest hopes, and given fruition to desire, will you, in misguided prejudice, turn aside from proofs of experi¬ ence and reason, and abrogate the causes of unmingled good ? Let us 11 Rep. No. 306. examine the supposed pretexts for an interposition which can allege no motive in public discredit or private suffering, and must serve, if it suc¬ ceed, only to prevent the full development of wise and happy legislation in the continuance of prosperity throughout a smiling lam . 1st. Revenue is supposed to be wanted, and its increase to oe promised by the contemplated change to lower duties. Never was a moment more unpropitious tor such a plea. Wit a ' ? receipt of revenue during the last few months, there is an affluence of it since the commencement of the year, that is described to be in some of its daily exhibitions absolutely without any precedent. The treasury, which was threatened, at the opening of the session of Congress, with a large de- ficiencv by the annual report of its proper officer, soon began to fill its channels, and would speedily overflow them, were it not that, besides its ordinary wants, loans and treasury notes are to be provided lor. W e must demur to the proposition that lessening the rates of duty will aug¬ ment the amount of them. Sometime after the present law went into effect, it was ascertained that while the imports had, from whatever cause, diminished, as compared with the previous year, 32 per cent., the revenue had fallen only 4j per cent. Prohibition, if it exist at all, has been de¬ creed not by any excessive imposts, but at first by the distressed condition of the countrv; and when that \#as gradually dispersed’, then by the merit of domestic fabrics, with which foreign articles did not venture to compete. If, however, additional revenue be desirable, let it be sought in the obvious measure of taxation upon a class of articles which are now imported free. It is difficult to conceive how so certain and inevitable a relief should have been forgotten, whilea doubtful, dangerous, and (as we firmly believe) dis¬ astrous experiment is resorted to in its place. If this unnecessary expedi¬ ent should fail, and the consequence should follow which reason and the laws of trade predict, in diminished revenues and yet excessive importa¬ tions, (which are strictly compatible,) with the train of evils which they are calculated to produce, we shall regret to find the wants of the treasury met by renewed loans, reissued notes, and, as a last and reluctant consolation and relief, a compulsory resort to duties which the foreign producer will exclusively pay, on commodities which are now for his benefit admitted free, and which the domestic consumer will receive with no enhancement ot Allusion is sometimes made to the support which the Government at one time received from a scale of duties greatly below ihe present stand¬ ard. But it must be borne in mind that prices were then far greater than thev are now. A very moderate per ccntage upon invoices of iron at ^16 sterling the ton, would produce as much revenue as a much higher per eentage on a like article worth £5. Cotton goods, which brought in the market more than thirty cents the yard, might well be charged with a low ad valorem duty which would have beggared the treasury, if the price had been from five to eight. ....... 2d. The duties are supposed to be two high for any just principle ot political economy or commercial policy. We deny the justice of the standard by which the amount of them is ascertained. If there were any facts made known to the different branch¬ es of the Government during its anxious search for information while pre¬ paring the system of 1842, more clear than all the rest, they were such as demonstatcd the fallacy and fraud of foreign invoices. Goods themselves 12 Rep No. 306. are not manufactured with more consummate skill. The law of 183.3 contemplated a system of lasting ad valorem duties. Ingenuity was tasked to contrive devices by which they might be perverted and abused. For¬ eign cost became nothing but a name. If two sets of invoices were not actually forwarded, as was frequently the case, the one whereby to enter, and the other whereby to sell; the single document was altogether illu¬ sory. Prices were set down at which an ad valorem duty would bear no just proportion to the real value, and sales were not affected by them, be¬ cause they were regulated h^ the demand. Some pecuniary compensation has been occasionally derived by the treasury from large forfeitures of goods thus illegally imported ; hut no amount of money can compensate ior the demoralizing consequences with which these irregularities threat¬ en the honest fame of the whole mercantile class. The revenue is defraud¬ ed, not only by undervaluing the cost of the goods, but of the packages that contain them, and of the carriage and shipping charges at the place or exportation. Yet this is the standard by which the present rates of duties are ascertained! An importer compares his fictitious invoice with the specific duty upon its amount, and the result is supposed to be oppres¬ sive in the extreme. It is known, besides, that at this moment prices are greatly reduced. One-third of the iron manufactories of Scotland, Wales, and Staffordshire, have ceased to operate. Others are selling at a sacri¬ fice. No correct estimate can be formed of the true proportion between duty and ordinary value by such a standard ; and it is believed, besides, that articles are often inserted of a quality so bad as not to be the subject of import except for the occasion, or an object of habitual sale. These practices, while they have partially driven the honest trader from the field, have taught us lessons in vain, if we still construct our tariff systems upon their immoral, deceptive, pernicious, and now detected and exposed irregularities. It is with a knowledge of these circumstances, fully au¬ thenticated, that an American legislature is about to return to a scale of ad valorem duties, which France, and England, and Prussia, and every other country which does not choose to become the victim of shallow frauds, has exploded, while we are willing to rely upon such deceptive proofs of value as have been universally condemned. Officers of the customs throughout the country have expressed their belief that little or no danger exists of direct smuggling. But of prac¬ tices Which have the effect in a way and to an extent the most pernicious by the use of fictitious invoices, all agree that the danger is imminent, as long as the temptation exists. Ad valorem duties are to be avoided, as delusive in all cases except where an infinite variety and gradation in the price and quality of articles coming under the same general description, render a different standard extremely difficult, or where subsisting ar¬ rangements with foreign nations occasion embarrassment in the adoption of it. Long-tried experience has enforced the conclusion, that it is not pos¬ sible to levy ad valorem duties, so as to do equal justice to all descriptions of importers, and to guard against evasions and frauds. The specific mode of levying duties insures the actual revenue intended, destroys the in¬ centives to fraud, and takes away the advantage otherwise too frequently gained by the exercise of prevarication and perjury, to the injury of the moral tone of society. It facilitates the business of the custom-house and of the importer, and it induces the importation of good articles instead of those which are worthless or inferior. Few descriptions of merchandise 13 Rep, No. 306. are not readily brought to conform to it. Silks, which among various . miscellaneous articles, are proposed to be made the subject of a different arrangement, are peculiarly proper for specific duties, the value of them is often governed by their weight, and many of the staple manufactures of them are bought and sold in different markets accordingly. It is only to apply the relative specific charges to the different descriptions of them, and equal justice is done to the importer from whatever country, and to the consumer at home. In returning to the obsolete plan of ad valorem charges, the proposed law even dispenses with the only corrective which has been heretofore ap¬ plied to their abuse. It is well known that what are called the sweepings of the European warehouses, are sent to the United States. The export¬ ers trust to the variety of purchasers and the want of experience, that they will meet in the American market and they know that prices at all exceeding the charges of transportation and entry, will be clear gain. They pour upon the country trash of different kinds, at low invoice rates, and it may be, although it does not necessarily follow, at seemingly low prices when exposed to sale. The inexperienced and the poor become blindly the purchasers of what they consider cheap goods, which are in reality the dearest, because they are the worst they can buy ; and fortunes are made out of the hard earnings of the humble, the industrious, and the ignorant. To throw a shield over these victims of threatened imposition, and to correct an evil founded on the one side in honest ignorance, and on the other in cunning fraud, the principle has been resorted to of aver¬ aging certain classes of goods, and assessing the duty not always upon the colorable and arbitrary charges in the invoice, but upon definite me¬ dium prices to which it is easy for all parties to conform. If some articles, by this process, should be assessed too high, it will not be the fault of the foreign manufacturer or shipper, if others are not assessed top low. Th& range is never wide, and the suffering, if there be one, will rest not with the consumer, but the producer and his shipping friends abroad. Hence the system of minimums. If, in truth, the system be unjust, it is difficult to explain the inducement trt continued importations in the face of it, at pro¬ fits sufficient to counteract duties seemingly prohibitory, and in the face of what is supposed to be inevitable loss. No one objects to them except the importer; and his objection somewhat fantastically resolves itself into the argument, that nobody understands them except himself. The under¬ signed cannot admit the truth of the assertion, or the soundness of the argument. They can discover at least no mystery in a regulation which • wisely fixes a rate, or rather a series of rates, of duties, at once to check the free-trade tendencies of foreigners, and their disposition to trifle with the provisions of our revenue laws, to keep the true standards of collection at the custom-houses unperplexed, and the true amounts unimpaired, and, above all, to save the poor from the effects of greater skill and experience, and perhaps of artifice, cupidity, and fraud. A large proportion of importations is made on foreign account. The actual extent ascertained some little time ago at the custom-house at New York,was sixtv-five per cent, from England on English account, and thirty- five per cent, on American account; eighty-three per cent, from France on French account, and seventeen per cent, on American account. And from all other countries, (China excepted,) the proportion in favor of foreign importations upon foreign account is the same as those from France, viz. 14 Rep. No. 306. eighty-three per cent. According to another account, this last item should stand ninety-five per cent. We are not about to object to enterprise, let it come from what quarter it may. The fact is adverted to for the sake of guarding against a too easy credulity towards those who have interests and wishes directly opposed to our own. When the foreign importer de¬ clares that duties are too high, that the mode of applying them is unwise, that low duties produce most revenue, that minimums are a dangerous mystery, and that the example of Switzerland is worthy of imitation, (a country which has not a single custom-house, levies not a single duty, and has not one protection to commerce among her laws,) he must expect that a judgment biased by interest, that advice which, if not hostile to the in¬ terests of the country is regardless of them, will be scanned by other eyes besides his own. Half of this remark might be applied to many persons engaged merely in the business of importation. Yet, it is believed that the proposed law is founded upon suggestions from no other quarter. Tables from the treasury are themselves necessarily the result of invoices, the fairness and accuracy of which that department has no other means of testing than ourselves. Not a few of this same class of importing mer¬ chants, alive to true policy and truer patriotism, have entertained, and ex¬ pressed widely different sentiments. Among the numerous appeals to Congress during the year 1842, were those of mercantile men of long experience and the highest respectability, resident in the great commer¬ cial city of New York. They stated their extensive engagements in the shipping business, and in receiving merchandise for sale on commission, and that they belonged to a class which had once zealously contended for low T rates of duties ; that their opinions had, however, been changed by the discredit and disgrace which they saw brought upon the Government by the want of a suitable revenue; that increased rates of duties on imports, alone, could effectually relieve the.Government from embarrassment, and place it in a favorable position ; and they hoped that the rates of duties might be so regulated as incidentally to give protection to those descriptions of mineral production and mechanic and manufacturing industry which are essential to the national independence. This communication is taken from a large mass, collected from all descriptions of respectable persons and re¬ presentations of interests, by the Treasury Department, and now remain¬ ing there. If the law, founded upon intelligence diligently and exten¬ sively sought, and largely communicated from every accessible source, be impolitic or incomplete, the result cannot be ascribed to a want of anxious and candid inquiry. Information is believed not to have been materially increased since that time. When the example shall be produced of one nation which has become great or rich without having developed its re¬ sources by fostering the productive labor of its inhabitants, it will be time enough to hesitate in the adoption and active pursuit for ourselves of a similar policy. France, now the principal silk growing and silk manufac¬ turing country of the world, was condemned at one period by her own statesmen, as incompetent to the production of that invaluable commodity. Her climate was declared to be too cold, and her vernal seasons too late ; and she remained under the ban of the ignorance of her own resources, until proper protection reversed the alleged decrees of nature, by effec¬ tually softening the rigors of her climate, and hastening the opening of her spring. Germany was slow to escape from the pernicious inculcation of a sordid foreign policy, that nations could become rich and powerful 15 Rep. No. 306. only by universal commercial freedom. Protection was at length secur¬ ed to manufactures by the system of the Zoll Verein ; and articles similar to those imported under a high tariff duty became better and cheaper than those of foreign production, while agricultural products rose everywhere in price, and the value of landed property became greatly enhanced. Machinery was substituted for handy work, and while all branches of in¬ dustry throve in proportion to the protection they received, some were enabled altogether to supplant those of foreign growth. That country now practically experiences and exhibits the value and necessity of a system of domestic manufactures, protected and developed for national indepen¬ dence and power. England has by shining example taught these same lessons, with occasional disavowal of them in theory, by statesmen who were too wise to omit an observance of them in practice. Rude in her agriculture and limited in her resources, her history was far advanced before she had any manufactures for exportation. Heavy subsidies on the exportation of wool formed a large part of the royal revenues. Foreign artisans were invited from the rich cities of Continental Europe; foreign commodities, similar to those which it was designed to encourage, were strictly prohibited from importation on pain of forfeiture and other pun¬ ishment, and the consequences are exhibited in a comparison between the past and present condition of the most powerful nation on the face of the globe. A commerce which, at the commencement of the system, had scarcely found its way to the Baltic or the Mediterranean, now fills the habitable world. Agriculture, which had no existence as an art, has be¬ come a science, and has made a rudely cultivated island one entire gar¬ den, enclosing, from the beginning of the reign of George III to the year 18 j 4, 6,840,540 acres of land. Manufactures, protected and encouraged, have, more than any other cause, produced these wonders. Magnificence and power and wealth are the effects of her exact and rigorous protective policy, which, extended over creative arts in the shape of manufactures, ap¬ parently the most simple, has, like the wand of the enchanter, changed the whole face of things. No nation can become great by agriculture alone. Agriculture alone can scarcely flourish. It is by a union with the me¬ chanic arts, in proper equilibrium, that both become sources of national grandeur. With the largest revenues ever collected in any nation, England derives little of them from her soil. While, in 1841, her other taxes amount¬ ed to £51,997,'000, the land tax was only £1,183,585. The comparison is not without interest between this and the policy of other European nations. France at the same time had a land tax of £23,250,000, other taxes £i7,- 5u0,000. Prussia, land tax, £3,994,000, other taxes, £->,6 -7,000. Austria, land tax, £8,795,000, other taxes. £r,700,000. Within less than forty years, the theory has been ingeniously maintained, that England herself, the commercial emporium of the world, could fall back on those her other re¬ sources, and maintain her supremacy, independently of her commerce. While these and other instances are before our eyes of the necessity of encouragement, and the value of the arts which it unfolds, as manifested in the prosperity of nations, instances no less striking are at hand of the downward tendency of those which have neglected to keep alive, and the perpetual blight upon others which have habitually withheld the genial influence. Spain w as the parent of rich colonies, the possessor of exhaust¬ less mines, the recipient for centuries of the precious metals to an extent exceeding twenty-one millions of dollars a year Her gold and silver 16 Rep. No. 306. were paid to other countries for productions which her stout population, fine climate, and prolific soil, were well able to unfold at borne, and she stands where she did in tirrres long since past, a stranger to improvement and distanced In the career of civilization. Travellers describe the situa¬ tion of the country as miserable in the extreme. With corn in great abundance, and wines of the best quality, so cheap that the driver was in the habit of bathing with them the shoulders of his mules, the people (say they) were literally starving; the roads covered with beggars and gypsies ; human habitations by hundreds excavated in banks of clay, with nothing in them better than straw for fuel, and often literally nothing for food ; vast numbers perishing with cold and hunger; highways beset with regular banditti, or with itinerant peasantry, who leave their work to rob and murder; and a state of society which forbids the punishment and almost the prosecution of the offender. With these examples in view, it would seem scarcely possible that American legislation should avoid a course which has been attended by so many benefits, or, by avoiding it, endanger a lapse into disgrace and ignominy. . In Massachusetts, where manufactures, under due encourage¬ ment, flourish, the proportion of children attending school to the whole population has been computed to be as one to three. In Spain, where encouragement and manufactures are not the policy of the Government, the estimate has been of 1 to 346! Similar parallels have been run in other countries, and from them not dissimilar inferences may be draw n. In England the proportion is 1 to 16; in Scotland 1 to 10 ; and in Germany 1 to 9. It is not intended that a necessary and immediate connexion exists between protection of manufactures or manufactures themselves and education ; but it is intended that general prosperity is promoted by them and the policy which sustains them, and that prosperity confers the pow er to do good, which, in the present day, is exhibited and promoted in nothing so conspicuously as the tendencies towards universal education. One of the most striking advantages of the system we are advocating is its entire conformity to free institutions of Government; and its effect in aw akening the faculties, expanding the views, employing the energies, and elevating the moral, social, and political standard of the people. In England, the improvements and discoveries, as well as the assiduous cul¬ tivation and rapid growth of manufactures have been among the humble in birth and station; whose hands have been employed upon the fabrics and the machinery which undivided and deeply interested care, and strong natural minds have led them, at first for convenience, and afterwards for emolument, to improve and simplify. It is under governments w here pro¬ perty is secure that its value and increase become objects of interest. Where possessions have no guaranty but the will of a despot, property excites little interest and undergoes little melioration. Everything that contributes to its enhancement is neglected by the government, and indif¬ ferent to the people. If millions come into the country for use, or as a medium of exchange, or hoarded treasures, they remain unfruitful and unmultiplied. 8 ' But where liberty inspires energy to bestow, by skill and labor, augmented value upon natural productions, and law protects the stores which ingenuity and industry have gathered, hundreds of millions are created out of the original productive stock. It has been well said of Switzerland, that neither tables of economy nor dissertations upon agri¬ culture taught the summits of her mountains to wave w ith corn. The Rep. No. 306. 17 strong hand of liberty guided the ploughshare through their rugged pre¬ cipices, and formed the furrow on their barren sides. If examples from abroad fail to bring conviction to the mind, let us seek instruction from domestic history. For many years after the Revolution a condition little short of vassalage existed in many respects among the freemen of the United States. They wore such garments, trod upon such carpets, guarded themselves with such locks, bolts, bars, and hinges, drank out of such glass, cooked their food with such vessels, mended their fences with such nails, and made their pens and ate their meals with such knives, as the once parent country chose to permit them to have; and at such prices as her artisans, merchants, and statesmen, combined, thought fit to demand. Some feeble efforts to attain an independence which had been gallantly fought for and reluctantly acknowledged, but never in reality enjoyed, were made, when a succession of impediments to inter¬ course, consummated, as was supposed, by open hostilities, inflicted upon us the penalty due to wilful blindness or neglect. Even the “hobnail,” which had been tauntingly declared to be beyond the skill of American workmen, was withheld. Prices before paid in ignorance, were now more than doubled by the rigors of war, and were submitted to from stern necessity. Necessary importations were made, through occasional ar¬ rangements with the enemy ; and a trade was carried on, under licenses, in positive violation of tlfe allegiance of the citizen. At such a time, when the art of spinning by machinery and weaving by hand had been, to a certain extent, known and exercised, a few persons in Boston, hav¬ ing heard of a new method of weaving by power-loom, by which immense labor and expense could be saved, resolved upon adopting it. An act of incorporation was obtained from the Legislature of Massachusetts, and a small water-power was purchased at Waltham. The “speeder” was soon added to the machinery. Thus fortified and thus prepared, the en¬ terprise was set in motion. Finding that the imported goods ffcll short in measurement of their widths in the invoice, the Waltham company honestly determined that when the yardstick should be laid on, it would find fair and full measurement; and the widths were graduated according¬ ly at thirty-seven inches to the yard. Finding, too, the light and flimsy texture of the foreign goods, for which they were about to make a domes¬ tic substitute, they resolved to give firmness and substance to their fabrics for wear and service, adapting them to the wants of farmers and laboring classes, w ho were to be the great consumers of them, as they had been of the light and thin “ gurrahs” and “baftas,” of which they were to take the place. An article was produced which is now known as the great leading fabric of the country. It was sold at thirty-two cents the yard, by the name and with the stamp of “ No. 1, Waltham cottons.” This same production, preserving its honest dimensions and substantial texture, has, from humble beginnings, grown to an extent which literally supplies the home market, and is sent in large quantities to foreign countries. It was sold in the autumn of 1842 and spring of 1843 at six cents and a half the yard, and brings now somewhat more. It has been disposed of more extensively than any other similar article, in the South Americarrmarkets, where the American stamp is sometimes affixed to British goods, in w hich the fabric also has been imitated in vain. Having been secured in the preferences of a home market, the domestic manufacturers have been en¬ abled, step by step, in the application of skill and improved machinery, 2 18 Rep. No. 306. with the advantages of cheap power, untiring industry, and rigid but vigorous economy, to reach a degree of merit in their fabrics, at a cost so low that they can sell them to the shipping merchants at moderate prices. Ey these shipping merchants they are exported to different foreign mar¬ kets, and there enter into successful competition with the fabrics of Great Britain, and every other country in the world. Farmers and laborers, mechanics, and every description of workingmen in the whole extent of the United States, are provided with this leading article, at a lower price than it could be permanently furnished at by any foreign workshops, even should they be disposed to treat us justly, if we were again subject to their tender mercies, by having no manufactures for ourselves. Mechanics, and other operatives in our factories, elevated in the scale of being above the corresponding class abroad, not crushed by the iron heel of privileged orders, but erect in the majesty of human nature, are paid higher wages and enjoy more leisure and comforts than are dreamed of elsewhere. Would it be believed in the loathsome dungeons of mining districts, now so well authenticated as the dark abodes of human degradation, ignorant, naked and deformed, or among the sickly tenants of various manufac¬ turing establishments, that the female operatives of Lowell have found leisure, spirit, and education, among their own numbers, to carry on a literary journal ? Manufactures created on individual account exceed any others. Those of boots and shoes are produced to the extent of fifty millions of dollars, and employ upwards of one hundred thousand persons. This great amount of business is carried on without any connexion with corporations. It is sustained entirely by individual enterprise. No machinery is em¬ ployed ; no large combination of wealth is concentrated to aid in con- ending with the fixed capital of European manufacturers. The home market provided by the enterprise of the manufacturers is not confined to a mere consumption of the bread-stuffs of the West, by the artisans of distant parts of the country. Machinery and domestic goods themselves are large consumers of domestic productions. Not many months ago, one of the ample products of the Western States was almost thrown away, or, as was said, actually burned for fuel, like the carcasses of sheep in some of the regions of South America. Now vast quantities of lard- oil are made by the swine growers ; and the introduction of it into a single woollen manufactory is at this moment a saving of ten thousand dollars a year. The wool was formerly oiled with olive or sperm-oil, at a cost of from 90 to 120 cents the gallon, and lard-oil, which is in all respects as good, if not better, is now used, which costs 60 cents a gallon. Other productions of the West are finding their way to profitable markets with no less certainty. Bread-stuffs will scarcely look for purchasers to any great extent in foreign countries as long as corn laws prevail, or fertile soils are to be found at comparatively short distances. Four per cent, from the whole United States have sought a precarious and not diminished market abroad, while all besides must find consumers among the prosper¬ ous and robust of our own land. A swelling population exhibits per¬ petual increase, which is augmented by combined circumstances beyond that of any other country; for it has the varied momentum of moral and natural causes. Free institutions and equal laws are united with great influx of foreign citizenship, unlimited territory, prolific soil, subsistence 19 Rep. No. 306. easily obtained, and sources of comfort which, if less refined, are more dif¬ fusive and better calculated for the mass of mankind than any that can be found elsewhere. The consequence is, that the number of mouths to be fed increases with unprecedented rapidity. What is of no less conse¬ quence to the agriculturist, the relative number of his own class dimi¬ nishes, while that of persons engaged in manufacturing pursuits more than proportionally increases, for it draws from the commercial ranks besides. With all the uncertainties of legislation to which the nation has been exposed, the comparison, exhibited by the census of two periods, twen¬ ty years distant, is as follows : In 1820, the persons employed in agriculture were - - 2,070,646 In 1840, --------- 3,719.951 Making a decrease from 83.4 to 80.4 per cent, of the whole population. In 1820, the persons employed in commerce were - - 72,493* In 1840,.-117,607 Being a decrease from 2.9 to 2.5 per cent. In 1820, the persons employed in manufactures were - 349,506 In 1840,. 791,749 Being an increase from 13.7 to 17.1 per cent. It is fair to presume that an absence of fluctuation in the laws and a tendency of the arts to promote each other, will hereafter cause to he ex¬ hibited still more striking relative differences. Consumers are found not only among the cotton printers of Massachusetts and the miners and fur¬ naces of Pennsylvania, but the vast variety of multiplied artisans—tan¬ ners, curriers, shoemakers, saddlers, paperrimkers, printers, glassmakers, type-founders, brickmakers, painters, &c,, &c., &c., throughout the land. Let this market for the agriculturist be destroyed and where will he stand ? It is often asked with apparent triumph, if protection has- done its office, and American fabrics have been successful in the competition, why should a seemingly'protective duty still be.required? An answer is easily to be found. 1st. Great capitalists abroad might well be content to enter the lists again, if, by underselling at a loss, they could induce a purchase of inferior goods long enough to break down less richly endowed domestic establishments. A British statesman long since officially declared that ie it was worth while to incur a loss upon the first exportation, in order, by the glut, to stifle in the cradle those rising manufactories in the United States which the war had forced into existence, contrary to the natural course of things.” A loss it can scarcely be called. It is the policy of great manufacturers to sell off their surplus stock, to be shipped away at any hazard of sales. Prices must be sustained at home, at the risk of occasional sacrifice. A small quantity, forced upon an already glutted market, would cause the fall in price of all that immense quantity re¬ quired for the home trade, which is infinitely more important, because more extensive, various, and certain, than that of the United States. In the next place, it has been already intimated that our native supe¬ riority is yet limited to articles of coarse fabric and common use. The line is narrow which separate’s them from finer goods. It will in time be passed. At present, the English manufacturer is skilled beyond us. The very humidity of his climate renders the working of the light threads of delicate fabrics easier than under our brighter skies, and in a less humid and more transparent atmosphere. This advantage, arising from what is 20 Rep. No. 306. in most respects an evil, must be counteracted by longer practice and greater adroitness than have been yet attained. Our cheap water-power iloes not extend its peculiar benefits to the more delicate and finer goods, which can be made as readily with the use of steam. Less power is re¬ quired to drive machinery on the lighter than the heavier article. The British workman employs machines to mix a portion of the poor short staple (India or Surat) cotton with the better material of American growth, the cost being about half, and the appearance of the fabric, when bleached, not inferior, although less strong and durable, and capable of much less service. Wages make a much wider difference in the construc¬ tion of fine than of coarse goods. A pound of cotton requires a much greater extent of labor to be worked into the one than the other. Hand- loom weavers are paid in one country eight shillings and six pence a week, and similar operatives in the other five dollars, or more than double the amount. Great perseverance and an active demand, concurring with improved machinery and other advantages already adverted to, have counterbalanced the item of high wages as to the useful and plainer articles, but have not effected a similar result as to those which are richer and more highly wrought. To remove or greatly reduce the impost on either would be to expose the whole to risks which they have more than once successfully encountered, and escaped from the imminent peril not unscathed. Mercantile interests are not overlooked in the provisions which are asked for the supply of revenue and the support of manufactures. They are, on the contrary, directly as well as indirectly promoted. New objects of merchandise, new and increased freights for shipping, are the results. While domestic soil and culture produce, some times, the essential raw materials, and the hands to work them, many and perhaps most of the incidents to successful labor are transported from abroad. England and Scotland do not send the plainer carpetings, as formerly; but cargoes of South American, Smyrna, and African coarse wools, load our own ships for the manufacture of Ingrain carpets, which, retailed at fifty cents the yard, are sold throughout the country, as cheaper and better commodities by half than those for which, not long since, we were indebted to foreign looms. Our tonnage, which is employed in transporting these wools, and coffee, and Brazil sugar, for refining. Ac., from South America, goes proudly freighted with native products in return. It is confidently be¬ lieved that American goods have been shipped within the last eight months to China, to pay for every ounce of tea that will be imported during the whole year. To this, and other similar circumstances, is to be ascribed the fact that, while importations have been large, money is cheap and abundant, and foreign exchanges low. Wool from South America and other countries, and cheap sugars from Brazil, supply particular manufactories of no inconsiderable extent. But the demand is already great, and may be infinitely various, which will employ shipping and nurse seamen in the transportation of drugs and dyes, (logwood, indigo,, madder, lac-dye, mungeet, annatto, and an innumerable rest,) for manu¬ facturing not carpets only, hut a vast variety of cotton, as well as wool¬ len and other goods. The aim of a discriminating tariff is to benefit every part of the coun¬ try. A southern planter purchases his domestic goods as low as a north¬ ern merchant, and both have attained the diminished price through the 21 Rep. No. 306. aid of the domestic manufacturer, or, if you will, notwithstanding his agency. An eastern shopkeeper pays as dearly for imported fancy arti¬ cles of luxury or use as an agent on the spot of a similar tradesman who carries on business in the far West. The rights, privileges, and immuni¬ ties of the Constitution are preserved. Transportation costs as much from the New York warehouse of the foreign manufacturer in one street, as from the New York warehouse of the domestic manufacturer in the next, and no more. No preference is given ; no advantage is obtained. If the manufacturer happen to derive a questionable profit from one descrip¬ tion of enterprise, the merchant does the like from another, and the planter from a third. Duties in the aggregate are the same. They are to be limited, it is admitted, by the demands for revenue. Were particular arti¬ cles rendered dearer (which is denied) by discrimination, others, by the same discrimination, and according to the same rule, would be rendered cheaper, and a community which uses all is unaffected by special assess¬ ment. The theory which insists upon the palpable effect of increased price from increased duty, which, as it asserts, adds exactly so much to the foreign cost, overlooks the difference in the doctrine of causes and effects in different sciences. In pure mechanics and in the mere action of physi¬ cal things, similar causes invariably produce similar effects. But when the caprices of arbitrary will, the subtleties of avarice, or the combina¬ tions and calculations of trade and commerce, are the ever-varying influ¬ ences that govern, rules of natural philosophy no longer prevail. Motive and desire are mixed with mere mechanical impulse, and results are ascer¬ tained (and then not always uniformly) by experience alone. If, indeed, a whole range of horizontal duties were fixed, far beyond the standard of revenue, so as to compel the farmer to pay for his ploughshare, and the shopkeeper for his cutlery, more than they are really worth, and the con¬ sequence should be that neither the one nor the other derived any possible benefit from the tax, while the artisan and the artisan’s employer grew rich, we could perceive the inequality and the reason for complaint. All this is a theory which has no foundation in fact. Add, that the grower of articles which are largely exported, pays the entire duty upon those which are imported in return, and the theory is fully stated. It requires only to he confronted with an opposite state of facts, viz : that no more reve¬ nue is raised from duties than the treasury requires ; that no one commo¬ dity is taxed with a view to encourage a corresponding one, unless that corresponding domestic commodity becomes cheaper and better for pur¬ poses of general use; and (now) that the price of imported goods is paid to a certain and an increasing extent, by sending abroad manufactures which are objects of discrimination, and the theory will not command assent. The planter who receives payment for his crops, by selling bills of exchange, or by importing specie in return, surely pays no duties by any hypothesis. If merchandise be preferred by him as the subject of im¬ portation, it is only because the profit upon it will more than absorb them, and he enjoys the double advantage of agriculture and commerce combin¬ ed. When, in point of fact, he sells his cotton to the shipper at home, he pays no duty even in theory, and the purchaser is enabled to make his gains in defiance of the cost of transportation and the exactions of the custom-houses abroad and at home. Other causes must be sought for diminished crops in some places and successful rivalry in others, besides 22 Rep. No. 306. prosperous and profitable competition on the part of distant manufac¬ tories, with the accustomed efforts of the old world. It must be borne in mind, that while that part of the country which oh jects to the encouragement of manufactures contributes largely in one de¬ scription of productions to general affluence, the manufacturing sections gather their rich offerings from various sources, and place them all upon a common altar. The middle States produce 32.7 of all the fruits of agri¬ culture, 42. of manufactures, 41.6 of commerce, 64.3 of mining, 40.7 of the forest, and 16.4 of the fisheries. If 790,479,275 pounds of cotton are gathered for exportation and home consumption, 615,525,302 bushels of Indian corn, wheat, rye, oats, buckwheat, and barley, are furnished almost exclusively for the nourishment of human and animal life at home, while cotton goods are manufactured of the value of $46,350,453. Of something more than a thousand millions in value, the total annual products of in¬ dustry in all the Scates, $390,558,303 are derived from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and the Districtof Columbia. Each section vies in teeming industry with all the rest. Resemblances are preserved which identify sisters of one great family,.while a seeming diver¬ sity of features is everywhere discernible. Masses of mineral wealth—cop¬ per and lead, coal and iron—are waiting only to be disinterred in Pennsyl¬ vania, Missouri, Wisconsin, and Iowa. Agricultural productions, without limit, spring up at the command of the husbandman in Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana. Tobacco and rice and sugar and cotton are in rich abundance poured forth from the warm regions of the South and Southwest. Fisheries and the loom and navigation yield their full quota of contribu¬ tion to national wealth and power in the East. While soil and labor are thus in active production in all quarters of the country, almost countless millions of acres of the national domain are ready to tempt the enter¬ prising disposition and employ the untiring energies of all who desire to possess broader fields, and to engage in fresher employments than are to be found in the ordinary pursuits of civil life. No less than 127,724,046 acres of unsold public land are now in the market at minimum prices, ex¬ clusive of courses surveyed and not yet ordered for sale, and of land yet to be surveyed. With such variety of objects in the reach of all, and in ample and happily regulated proportions the fruits of all, there would seem to be scarcely room for discontent or excuse for jealousy. Many of these possessions are comparatively recent in abundance and profitable use. In their common novelty they teach a lesson how all the rival merits, how all the mutually emulating efforts of each section of the country may grow up and expand together : in their fresh and vigorous display they afford an earnest of greater developments of yet unexplored resources in the not distant future. Exhaustless anthracite regions, which now supply in many accessible districts a large part, and in some substantially the whole, of the fuel for manufactures, steam, furnaces, and the ordinary purposes of life, were within five and twenty years treated as worthless tracts of barren ground. Cotton, the rich staple of the sunny South, was, nearly in the business recollection of living men, received with cau¬ tion and distrust to entry at a British custom-house, because, as an Ame¬ rican product, it was unknown. This fact, related in the House of Com¬ mons, was accompanied by the undoubted allegation that it now found its way freely through the same avenue and from the same quarter yearly to the extent in value of fifteen millions pounds sterling. At the com- 23 P Rep. No. 306. mencement of the century, this same commodity, as a manufacture in the United States, was limited to five hundred bales. It made slow and feeble advances for a long course of time. Five hundred bales only were added to the quantity at the end of five years. In 1810 it reached but eighty-nine thousand more. The value of domestic cotton manufactures of 1840 , after deducting one-third for the value of the raw material, and leaving two-thirds for the wages of labor and the profits of capital, was $ 53 , 168 , 047 . Such an increasing market could not require many years to enable it to receive and consume all of the products of the American States, and to leave the British markets in the unenvied enjoyment of whatever their East Indian colonies might produce. Never was an important measure resorted to in which the people had so deep an interest, with so little call from the people. If an intimation came up to Congress that any partial and slightly-extended evil was believed to exist under the present regulations, inquiry was immediately made, and the report was proved to be unfounded. A memorial, for example, was presented, setting forth high prices of hardware. Information was at once received contradictory of the statements which it contained. The same articles were enumerated, and the errors in relation to them were exposed. Anvils, which were said to be worth eighteen shillings sterling, are shown to be very inferior, and little used, and are now sold one cent per pound cheaper than before the present tariff. A good article costs not eighteen, but thirty-two shillings. Brass battery kettles. The price has been reduced since the tariff, and the imported article, principally from Germany, is two cents per pound higher than the American. Butt hinges, of cast iron, are made as low as those of the same quality were ever imported. Hammers, steel-faced, for blacksmiths and carpenters, are made at less prices in this country, than are charged for those imported. Sad-irons are made here at three and a half cents cash. Imported sad¬ irons before the tariff, cost four and a half to five cents. American iron-wire is now sold at thirty-five per cent, discount. The same article was sold at twenty-five per cent, discount before the tariff, being now about fourteen per cent, cheaper to the consumer. Rosehead iron wrought-nails are sold to consumers two cents per pound cheaper than before the tariff, and are made here better than the imported article. Cross-cut and pit arc saws are made here fully to supply the demand, at nearly ten per cent, cheaper than before the tariff. Iron screws, called wood-screws, of home manufacture, are sold at thirty to thirty-five per cent, discount, and before the tariff it was twenty to twenty-five per cent., being a difference to the consumer of about fourteen per cent, more, and a better article. Pins in packs are made largely in this country, and are sold ten cents per pack cheaper than before the tariff. Pins in pounds are about ten per cent, cheaper in the country of production, than they were before the tariff. On these, and like manufactures of iron, it is obvious that public con¬ venience requires no change. Yet a change is contemplated, so considera¬ ble in itself, and so disastrous in its effects, that it cannot fail to excite alarm. While.a moderate abatement is proposed in the duties on bars and 24 Rep. No. 306. bolts of iron, and one not very considerable on that which is manufactured wholly or in part by rolling, so heavy a reduction is contemplated on various kinds of manufactures, as to condemn the raw material to disuse. It may be proper, in passing, to notice the proposed disastrous and doubly inappropriate provision relative to the article of wool. Coarse wool is, and (it is thought) can be grown to a very small extent in this country, although useful for manufacture. Upon this the bill proposes to raise the duty. The finer qualities are grown by the great body of farmers in certain sections, and are susceptible of endless extent; yet, upon them the duty is to be greatly reduced. It is confidently believed that the time is not distant when American grown wool will be adequate to the entire demand of the nation. The class of farmers, (the largest and not the least respectable among us,) would experience, in the culture of their wool staple, a blow that must compel them to abandon it, if the bill should p