Thirty Years' View (Vol. I of 2)

"It is a fact authenticated to this House by communications from the Executive, that there are regulations established by some European nations, contrary to the law of nations, by which our property is seized and disposed of in such a way that damages have accrued. We are bound either to obtain reparation for the injustice, or compensate the damage. It is only in the first instance, no doubt, that the burden is to be thrown upon the United States. The proper department of government will, no doubt, take proper steps to obtain redress. The justice of foreign nations will certainly not permit them to deny reparation when the breach of the law of nations evidently appears; at any rate, it is just that the individual should not suffer. He believed the amount of the damages that would come within the meaning of this resolution, would not be very considerable."

Reproducing these views of Mr. Madison, and with a desire to fortify myself with his authority, the better to produce a future practical effect, I now give the extract from my own speech of 1830:

"Mr. Benton said he rose to ask the leave for which he gave notice on Friday last; and in doing so, he meant to avail himself of the parliamentary rule, seldom followed here, but familiar in the place from whence we drew our rules – the British Parliament – and strictly right and proper, when any thing new or unusual is to be proposed, to state the clauses, and make an exposition of the principles of his bill, before he submitted the formal motion for leave to bring it in.

"The tenor of it is, not to abolish, but to provide for the abolition of duties. This phraseology announces, that something in addition to the statute – some power in addition to that of the legislature, is to be concerned in accomplishing the abolition. Then the duties for abolition are described as unnecessary ones; and under this idea is included the twofold conception, that they are useless, either for the protection of domestic industry, or for supplying the treasury with revenue. The relief of the people from sixteen millions of taxes is based upon the idea of an abolition of twelve millions of duties; the additional four millions being the merchant's profit upon the duty he advances; which profit the people pay as a part of the tax, though the government never receives it. It is the merchant's compensation for advancing the duty, and is the same as his profit upon the goods. The improved condition of the four great branches of national industry is presented as the third object of the bill; and their relative importance, in my estimation, classes itself according to the order of my arrangement. Agriculture, as furnishing the means of subsistence to man, and as the foundation of every thing else, is put foremost; manufactures, as preparing and fitting things for our use, stands second, commerce, as exchanging the superfluities of different countries, comes next; and navigation, as furnishing the chief means of carrying on commerce, closes the list of the four great branches of national industry. Though classed according to their respective importance, neither branch is disparaged. They are all great interests – all connected – all dependent upon each other – friends in their nature – for a long time friends in fact, under the operations of our government: and only made enemies to each other, as they now are by a course of legislation, which the approaching extinguishment of the public debt presents a fit opportunity for reforming and ameliorating. The title of my bill declares the intention of the bill to improve the condition of each of them. The abolition of sixteen millions of taxes would itself operate a great improvement in the condition of each; but the intention of the bill is not limited to that incidental and consequential improvement, great as it may be; it proposes a positive, direct, visible, tangible, and countable benefit to each; and this I shall prove and demonstrate, not in this brief illustration of the title of my bill, but at the proper places, in the course of the examination into its provisions and exposition of its principles.

"I will now proceed with the bill, reading each section in its order, and making the remarks upon it which are necessary to explain its object and to illustrate its operation."

The First Section

"That, for the term of ten years, from and after the first day of January, in the year 1832, or, as soon thereafter as may be agreed upon between the United States and any foreign power, the duties now payable on the importation of the following articles, or such of them as may be agreed upon, shall cease and determine, or be reduced, in favor of such countries as shall, by treaty, grant equivalent advantages to the agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and navigation, of the United States.

"This section contains the principle of abolishing duties by the joint act of the legislative and executive departments. The idea of equivalents, which the section also presents, is not new, but has for its sanction high and venerated authority, of which I shall not fail to avail myself. That we ought to have equivalents for abolishing ten or twelve millions of duties on foreign merchandise is most clear. Such an abolition will be an advantage to foreign powers, for which they ought to compensate us, by reducing duties to an equal amount upon our productions. This is what no law, or separate act of our own, can command. Amicable arrangements alone, with foreign powers, can effect it; and to free such arrangements from serious, perhaps insuperable difficulties, it would be necessary first to lay a foundation for them in an act of Congress. This is what my bill proposes to do. It proposes that Congress shall select the articles for abolition of duty, and then leave it to the Executive to extend the provisions of the act to such powers as will grant us equivalent advantages. The articles enumerated for abolition of duty are of kinds not made in the United States, so that my bill presents no ground of alarm or uneasiness to any branch of domestic industry.

"The acquisition of equivalents is a striking feature in the plan which I propose, and for that I have the authority of him whose opinions will never be invoked in vain, while republican principles have root in our soil. I speak of Mr. Jefferson, and of his report on the commerce and navigation of the United States, in the year '93, an extract from which I will read."

The Extract

"Such being the restrictions on the commerce and navigation of the United States, the question is, in what way they may best be removed, modified, or counteracted?

"As to commerce, two methods occur: 1. By friendly arrangements with the several nations with whom these restrictions exist: or, 2. By the separate act of our own legislatures, for countervailing their effects.

"There can be no doubt, but that, of these two, friendly arrangements is the most eligible. Instead of embarrassing commerce under piles of regulating laws, duties, and prohibitions, could it be relieved from all its shackles, in all parts of the world – could every country be employed in producing that which nature has best fitted it to produce, and each be free to exchange with others mutual surplusses, for mutual wants, the greatest mass possible would then be produced, of those things which contribute to human life and human happiness, the numbers of mankind would be increased, and their condition bettered.

"Would even a single nation begin with the United States this system of free commerce, it would be advisable to begin it with that nation; since it is one by one only that it can be extended to all. Where the circumstances of either party render it expedient to levy a revenue, by way of impost on commerce, its freedom might be modified in that particular, by mutual and equivalent measures, preserving it entire in all others.

"Some nations, not yet ripe for free commerce, in all its extent, might be willing to mollify its restrictions and regulations, for us, in proportion to the advantages which an intercourse with us might offer. Particularly they may concur with us in reciprocating the duties to be levied on each side, or in compensating any excess of duty, by equivalent advantages of another nature. Our commerce is certainly of a character to entitle it to favor in most countries. The commodities we offer are either necessaries of life, or materials for manufacture, or convenient subjects of revenue; and we take in exchange either manufactures, when they have received the last finish of art and industry, or mere luxuries. Such customers may reasonably expect welcome and friendly treatment at every market – customers, too, whose demands, increasing with their wealth and population, must very shortly give full employment to the whole industry of any nation whatever, in any line of supply they may get into the habit of calling for from it.

"But, should any nation, contrary to our wishes, suppose it may better find its advantage by continuing its system of prohibitions, duties, and regulations, it behooves us to protect our citizens, their commerce and navigation, by counter prohibitions, duties, and regulations, also. Free commerce and navigation are not to be given in exchange for restrictions and vexations; nor are they likely to produce a relaxation of them."

"The plan which I now propose adopts the idea of equivalents and retaliation to the whole extent recommended by Mr. Jefferson. It differs from his plan in two features: first, in the mode of proceeding, by founding the treaties abroad upon a legislative act at home; secondly, in combining protection with revenue, in selecting articles of exception to the system of free trade. This degree of protection he admitted himself, at a later period of his life. It corresponds with the recommendation of President Washington to Congress, in the year '90, and with that of our present Chief Magistrate, to ourselves, at the commencement of the present session of Congress.

"I will not now stop to dilate upon the benefit which will result to every family from an abolition of duties which will enable them to get all the articles enumerated in my bill for about one third, or one half less, than is now paid for them. Let any one read over the list of articles, and then look to the sum total which he now pays out annually for them, and from that sum deduct near fifty per cent., which is about the average of the duties and merchant's profit included, with which they now come charged to him. This deduction will be his saving under one branch of my plan – the abolition clause. To this must be added the gain under the clause to secure equivalents in foreign markets, and the two being added together, the saving in purchases at home being added to the gain in sales abroad, will give the true measure of the advantages which my plan presents.

"Let us now see whether the agriculture and manufactures of the United States do not require better markets abroad than they possess at this time. What is the state of these markets? Let facts reply. England imposes a duty of three shillings sterling a pound upon our tobacco, which is ten times its value. She imposes duties equivalent to prohibition on our grain and provisions; and either totally excludes, or enormously taxes, every article, except cotton, that we send to her ports. In France, our tobacco is subject to a royal monopoly, which makes the king the sole purchaser, and subjects the seller to the necessity of taking the price which his agents will give. In Germany, our tobacco, and other articles, are heavily dutied, and liable to a transit duty, in addition, when they have to ascend the Rhine, or other rivers, to penetrate the interior. In the West Indies, which is our great provision market, our beef, pork, and flour, usually pay from eight to ten dollars a barrel: our bacon, from ten to twenty-five cents a pound; live hogs, eight dollars each; corn, cornmeal, lumber, whiskey, fruit, vegetables, and every thing else, in proportion; the duties in the different islands, on an average, equalling or exceeding the value of the articles in the United States. We export about forty-five millions of domestic productions, exclusive of manufactures, annually; and it may be safely assumed that we have to pay near that sum in the shape of duties, for the privilege of selling these exports in foreign markets. So much for agriculture. Our manufactures are in the same condition. In many branches they have met the home demand, and are going abroad in search of foreign markets. They meet with vexatious restrictions, peremptory exclusions, or oppressive duties, wherever they go. The quantity already exported entitles them to national consideration, in the list of exports. Their aggregate value for 1828 was about five millions of dollars, comprising domestic cottons, to the amount of a million of dollars; soap and candles, to the value of nine hundred thousand dollars; boots, shoes, and saddlery, five hundred thousand dollars; hats, three hundred thousand dollars; cabinet, coach, and other wooden work, six hundred thousand dollars; glass and iron, three hundred thousand dollars; and numerous smaller items. This large amount of manufactures pays their value, in some instances more, for the privilege of being sold abroad; and, what is worse, they are totally excluded from several countries from which we buy largely. Such restrictions and impositions are highly injurious to our manufactures; and it is incontestably true, the amount of exports prove it, that what most of them now need is not more protection at home, but a better market abroad; and it is one of the objects of this bill to obtain such a market for them.

"It appears to me [said Mr. B.] to be a fair and practicable plan, combining the advantages of legislation and negotiation, and avoiding the objections to each. It consults the sense of the people, in leaving it to their Representatives to say on what articles duties shall be abolished for their relief; on what they shall be retained for protection and revenue; it then secures the advantage of obtaining equivalents, by referring it to the Executive to extend the benefit of the abolition to such nations as shall reciprocate the favor. To such as will not reciprocate, it leaves every thing as it now stands. The success of this plan can hardly be doubted. It addresses itself to the two most powerful passions of the human heart – interest and fear; it applies itself to the strongest principles of human action – profit and loss. For, there is no nation with whom we trade but will be benefited by the increased trade of her staple productions, which will result from a free trade in such productions; none that would not be crippled by the loss of such a trade, which loss would be the immediate effect of rejecting our system. Our position enables us to command the commercial system of the globe; to mould it to our own plan, for the benefit of the world and ourselves. The approaching extinction of the public debt puts it into our power to abolish twelve millions of duties, and to set free more than one-half of our entire commerce. We should not forego, nor lose the advantages of such a position. It occurs but seldom in the life of a nation, and once missed, is irretrievably gone, to the generation, at least, that saw and neglected the golden opportunity. We have complained, and justly, of the burthens upon our exports in foreign countries; a part of our tariff system rests upon the principle of retaliation for the injury thus done us. Retaliation, heretofore, has been our only resource: but reciprocity of injuries is not the way to enrich nations any more than individuals. It is an 'unprofitable contest,' under every aspect. But the present conjuncture, payment of the public debt, in itself a rare and almost unprecedented occurrence in the history of nations, enables us to enlarge our system; to present a choice of alternatives: one fraught with relief, the other presenting a burthen to foreign nations. The participation, or exclusion, from forty millions of free trade, annually increasing, would not admit of a second thought, in the head of any nation with which we trade. To say nothing of her gains in the participation in such a commerce, what would be her loss in the exclusion from it? How would England, France, or Germany, bear the loss of their linen, silk, or wine trade, with the United States? How could Cuba, St. Domingo, or Brazil, bear the loss of their coffee trade with us? They could not bear it at all. Deep and essential injury, ruin of industry seditions, and bloodshed, and the overthrow of administrations, would be the consequence of such loss. Yet such loss would be inevitable (and not to the few nations, or in the articles only which I have mentioned, for I have put a few instances only by way of example), but to every nation with whom we trade, that would not fall into our system, and throughout the whole list of essential articles to which our abolition extends. Our present heavy duties would continue in force against such nations; they would be abolished in favor of their rivals. We would say to them, in the language of Mr. Jefferson, free trade and navigation is not to be given in exchange for restrictions and vexations! But I feel entire confidence that it would not be necessary to use the language of menace or coercion. Amicable representations, addressed to their sense of self-interest, would be more agreeable, and not less effectual. The plan cannot fail! It is scarcely within the limits of possibility that it should fail! And if it did, what then? We have lost nothing. We remain as we were. Our present duties are still in force, and Congress can act upon them one or two years hence, in any way they please.

"Here, then, is the peculiar recommendation to my plan, that, while it secures a chance, little short of absolute certainty, of procuring an abolition of twelve millions of duties upon our exports in foreign countries, in return for an abolition of twelve millions of duties upon imports from them, it exposes nothing to risk, the abolition of duty upon the foreign article here being contingent upon the acquisition of the equivalent advantage abroad.

"I close this exposition of the principles of my bill with the single remark, that these treaties for the mutual abolition of duties should be for limited terms, say for seven or ten years, to give room for the modifications which time, and the varying pursuits of industry, may show to be necessary. Upon this idea, the bill is framed, and the period of ten years inserted by way of suggestion and exemplification of the plan. Another feature is too obvious to need a remark, that the time for the commencement of the abolition of duties is left to the Executive, who can accommodate it to the state of the revenue and the extinction of the public debt."

The plan which I proposed in this speech adopted the principle of Mr. Madison's resolutions but reversed their action. The discrimination which he proposed was a levy of five or ten per cent. more on the imports from countries which did not enter into our propositions for reciprocity: my plan, as being the same thing in substance, and less invidious in form, was a levy of five or ten per cent. less on the commerce of the reciprocating nations – thereby holding out an inducement and a benefit, instead of a threat and a penalty.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

ALUM SALT. THE ABOLITION OF THE DUTY UPON IT, AND REPEAL OF THE FISHING BOUNTY AND ALLOWANCES FOUNDED ON IT

I look upon a salt tax as a curse – as something worse than a political blunder, great as that is – as an impiety, in stinting the use, and enhancing the cost by taxation, of an article which God has made necessary to the health and comfort, and almost to the life, of every animated being – the poor dumb animal which can only manifest its wants in mute signs and frantic actions, as well as the rational and speaking man who can thank the Creator for his goodness, and curse the legislator that mars its enjoyment. There is a mystery in salt. It was used in holy sacrifice from the earliest day; and to this time, in the Oriental countries, the stranger lodging in the house, cannot kill or rob while in it, after he has tasted the master's salt. The disciples of Christ were called by their master the salt of the earth. Sacred and profane history abound in instances of people refusing to fight against the kings who had given them salt: and this mysterious deference for an article so essential to man and beast takes it out of the class of ordinary productions, and carries it up close to those vital elements – bread, water, fire, air – which Providence has made essential to life, and spread every where, that craving nature may find its supply without stint, and without tax. The venerable Mr. Macon considered a salt tax in a sacrilegious point of view – as breaking a sacred law – and fought against ours as long as his public life lasted; and I, his disciple, not disesteemed by him, commenced fighting by his side against the odious imposition; and have continued it since his death, and shall continue it until the tax ceases, or my political life terminates. Many are my speeches, and reports, against it in my senatorial life of thirty years; and among other speeches, one limited to a particular kind of salt not made in the United States, and indispensable to dried or pickled provisions. This is the alum salt, made by solar evaporation out of sea water; and being a kind not produced at home, indispensable and incapable of substitute, it had a legitimate claim to exemption from the canons of the American system. That system protected homemade fire-boiled common salt, because it had a foreign rival: we had no sun-made crystallized salt at home; and therefore had nothing to protect in taxing the foreign article. I had failed – we had all failed – in our attempts to abolish the salt tax generally: I determined to attempt the abolition of the alum salt duty separately; and with it, the fishing bounties and allowances founded upon it: and brought a bill into the Senate to accomplish that object. The fishing bounties and allowances being claimed by some, as a bounty to navigation (in which point of view they would be as unconstitutional as unjust), I was under the necessity of tracing their origin, as being founded on the idea of a drawback of the duty paid on the salt put upon the exported dried or pickled fish – commencing with the salt tax, and adjusted to the amount of the tax – rising with its increase and falling with its fall – and that, in the beginning allowed to the exportation of pickled beef and pork, to the same degree, and upon the same principle that the bounties and allowances were extended to the fisheries. In the bill introduced for this purpose, I spoke as follows:

"To spare any senator the supposed necessity of rehearsing me a lecture upon the importance of the fisheries, I will premise that I have some acquaintance with the subject – that I know the fisheries to be valuable, for the food they produce, the commerce they create, the mariners they perfect, the employment they give to artisans in the building of vessels; and the consumption they make of wood, hemp and iron. I also know that the fishermen applied for the bounties, at the commencement of our present form of government, which the British give to their fisheries, for the encouragement of navigation; and that they were denied them upon the report of the then Secretary of State (Mr. Jefferson). I also know that our fishing bounties and allowances go, in no part, to that branch of fishing to which the British give most bounty – whaling – because it is the best school for mariners; and the interests of navigation are their principal object in promoting fishing. No part of our bounties and allowances go to our whale ships, because they do not consume foreign salt on which they have paid duty, and reclaim it as drawback. I have also read the six dozen acts of Congress, general and particular, passed in the last forty years – from 1789 to 1829 inclusively – giving the bounties and allowances which it is my present purpose to abolish, with the alum salt duty on which all this superstructure of legislative enactment is built up. I say the salt tax, and especially the tax on alum salt (which is the kind required for the fisheries), is the foundation of all these bounties and allowances; and that, as they grew up together, it is fair and regular that they should sink and fall together. I recite a dozen of the acts: thus:

"1. Act of Congress, 1789, grants five cents a barrel on pickled fish and salted provisions, and five cents a quintal on dried fish, exported from the United States, in lieu of a drawback of the duties imposed on the importation of the salt used in curing such fish and provisions.

"N.B. Duty on salt, at that time, six cents a bushel.

"2. Act of 1790 increases the bounty in lieu of drawback to ten cents a barrel on pickled fish and salted provisions, and ten cents a quintal on dried fish. The duty on salt being then raised to twelve cents a bushel.

"3. Act of 1792 repeals the bounty in lieu of drawback on dried fish, and in lieu of that, and as a commutation and equivalent therefor, authorizes an allowance to be paid to vessels in the cod fishery (dried fish) at the rate of one dollar and fifty cents a ton on vessels of twenty to thirty tons; with a limitation of one hundred and seventy dollars for the highest allowance to any vessel.

"4. A supplementary act, of the same year, adds twenty per cent. to each head of these allowances.

"5. Act of 1797 increases the bounty on salted provisions to eighteen cents a barrel; on pickled fish to twenty-two cents a barrel; and adds thirty-three and a third per cent. to the allowance in favor of the cod-fishing vessels. Duty on salt, at the same time, being raised to twenty cents a bushel.

"6. Act of 1799 increases the bounty on pickled fish to thirty cents a barrel, on salted provisions to twenty-five.

"7. Act of 1800 continues all previous acts (for bounties and allowances) for ten years, and makes this proviso: That these allowances shall not be understood to be continued for a longer time than the correspondent duties on salt, respectively, for which the said additional allowances were granted, shall be payable.

"8. Act of 1807 repeals all laws laying a duty on imported salt, and for paying bounties on the exportation of pickled fish and salted provisions, and making allowances to fishing vessels – Mr. Jefferson being then President.

"9. Act of 1813 gives a bounty of twenty cents a barrel on pickled fish exported, and allows to the cod-fishing vessels at the rate of two dollars and forty cents the ton for vessels between twenty and thirty tons, four dollars a ton for vessels above thirty, with a limitation of two hundred and seventy-two dollars for the highest allowance; and a proviso, that no bounty or allowance should be paid unless it was proved to the satisfaction of the collector that the fish was wholly cured with foreign salt, and the duty on it secured or paid. The salt duty, at the rate of twenty cents a bushel, was revived as a war tax at the same time. Bounties on salted provisions were omitted.

"10. Act of 1816 continued the act of 1813 in force, which, being for the war only, would otherwise have expired.

"11. Act of 1819 increases the allowance to vessels in the cod fishery to three dollars and fifty cents a ton on vessels from five to thirty; to four dollars a ton on vessels above thirty tons; with a limitation of three hundred and sixty dollars for the maximum allowance.

"12. Act of 1828 authorizes the mackerel fishing vessels to take out licenses like the cod-fishing vessels, under which it is reported by the vigilant Secretary of the Treasury that money is illegally drawn by the mackerel vessels – the newspapers say to the amount of thirty to fifty thousand dollars per annum.

"These recitals of legislative enactments are sufficient to prove that the fishing bounties and allowances are bottomed upon the salt duty, and must stand or fall with that duty. I will now give my reasons for proposing to abolish the duty on alum salt, and will do it in the simplest form of narrative statement; the reasons themselves being of a nature too weighty and obvious to need, or even to admit, of coloring or exaggeration from arts of speech.

"1. Because it is an article of indispensable necessity in the provision trade of the United States. No beef or pork for the army or navy, or for consumption in the South, or for exportation abroad, can be put up except in this kind of salt. If put up in common salt it is rejected absolutely by the commissaries of the army and navy, and if taken to the South must be repacked in alum salt, at an expense of one dollar and twelve and a half cents a barrel, before it is exported, or sold for domestic consumption. The quantity of provisions which require this salt, and must have it, is prodigious, and annually increasing. The exports of 1828 were, of beef sixty-six thousand barrels, of pork fifty-four thousand barrels, of bacon one million nine hundred thousand pounds weight, butter and cheese two million pounds weight. The value of these articles was two millions and a quarter of dollars. To this amount must be added the supply for the army and navy, and all that was sent to the South for home consumption, every pound of which had to be cured in this kind of salt, for common salt will not cure it. The Western country is the great producer of provisions; and there is scarcely a farmer in the whole extent of that vast region whose interest does not require a prompt repeal of the duty on this description of salt.

"2. Because no salt of this kind is made in the United States, nor any rival to it, or substitute for it. It is a foreign importation, brought from various islands in the West Indies, belonging to England, France, Spain, and Denmark; and from Lisbon, St. Ubes, Gibraltar, the Bay of Biscay, and Liverpool. The principles of the protecting system do not extend to it: for no quantity of protection can produce a home supply. The present duty, which is far beyond the rational limit of protection, has been in force near thirty years, and has not produced a pound. We are still thrown exclusively upon the foreign supply. The principles of the protecting system can only apply to common salt, the product of which is considerable in the United States; and upon that kind, the present duty is proposed to be left in full force.

"3. Because the duty is enormous, and quadruples the price of the salt to the farmer. The original value of salt is about fifteen cents the measured bushel of eighty-four pounds. But the tariff substitutes weight for measure, and fixes that weight at fifty-six pounds, instead of eighty-four. Upon that fifty-six pounds, a duty of twenty cents is laid. Upon this duty, the retail merchant has his profit of eight or ten cents, and then reduces his bushel from fifty-six to fifty pounds. The consequence of all these operations is, that the farmer pays about three times as much for a weighed bushel of fifty pounds, as he would have paid for a measured bushel of eighty-four pounds, if this duty had never been imposed.

"4. Because the duty is unequal in its operation, and falls heavily on some parts of the community, and produces profit to others. It is a heavy tax on the farmers of the West, who export provisions; and no tax at all, but rather a source of profit, to that branch of the fisheries to which the allowances of the vessels apply. Exporters of provisions have the same claim to these allowances that exporters of fish have. Both claims rest upon the same principle, and upon the principle of all drawbacks, that of refunding the duty paid on the imported salt, which is re-exported on salted fish and provisions. The same principle covers the beef and pork of the farmer which covers the fish of the fisherman; and such was the law, as I have shown, for the first eighteen years that these bounties and allowances were authorized. Fish and provisions fared alike from 1789 to 1807. Bounties and allowances began upon them together, and fell together, on the repeal of the salt tax, in the second term of Mr. Jefferson's administration. At the renewal of the salt tax, in 1813, at the commencement of the late war, they parted company, and the law, to the exact sense of the proverb, has made fish of one and flesh of the other ever since. The fishing interest is now drawing about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars annually from the treasury; the provision raisers draw not a cent, while they export more than double as much, and ought, upon the same principle, to draw more than double as much money from the treasury.

"5. Because it is the means of drawing an undue amount of money from the public treasury, under the idea of an equivalent for the drawback of duty on the salt used in the curing of fish. The amount of money actually drawn in that way is about four millions seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and is now going on at the rate of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars per annum, and constantly augmenting. That this amount is more than the legal idea recognizes, or contemplates, is proved in various ways. 1. By comparing the quantity of salt supposed to have been used, with the quantity of fish known to have been exported, within a given year. This test, for the year 1828, would exhibit about seventy millions of pounds weight of salt on about forty millions of pounds weight of fish. This would suppose about a pound and three quarters of salt upon each pound of fish. 2. By comparing the value of the salt supposed to have been used, with the value of the fish known to have been exported. This test would give two hundred and forty-eight thousand dollars for the salt duty on about one million of dollars' worth of fish; making the duty one fourth of its value. On this basis, the amount of the duty on the salt used on exported provisions would be near six hundred thousand dollars. 3. By comparing the increasing allowances for salt with the decreasing exportation of fish. This test, for two given periods, the rate of allowance being the same, would produce this result: In the year 1820, three hundred and twenty-one thousand four hundred and nineteen quintals of dried fish exported, and one hundred and ninety-eight thousand seven hundred and twenty-four dollars paid for the commutation of the salt drawback: in 1828, two hundred and sixty-five thousand two hundred and seventeen quintals of dried fish exported, and two hundred and thirty-nine thousand one hundred and forty-five dollars paid for the commutation. These comparisons establish the fact that money is unlawfully drawn from the treasury by means of these fishing allowances, bottomed on the salt duty, and that fact is expressly stated by the Secretary of the Treasury (Mr. Ingham), in his report upon the finances, at the commencement of the present session of Congress. [See page eight of the report.]

"6. Because it has become a practical violation of one of the most equitable clauses in the constitution of the United States – the clause which declares that duties, taxes, and excises, shall be uniform throughout the Union. There is no uniformity in the operation of this tax. Far from it. It empties the pockets of some, and fills the pockets of others. It returns to some five times as much as they pay, and to others it returns not a cent. It gives to the fishing interest two hundred and fifty thousand dollars per annum, and not a cent to the farming interest, which, upon the same principle, would be entitled to six hundred thousand dollars per annum.

"7. Because this duty now rests upon a false basis – a basis which makes it the interest of one part of the Union to keep it up, while it is the interest of other parts to get rid of it. It is the interest of the West to abolish this duty: it is the interest of the Northeast to perpetuate it. The former loses money by it; the latter makes money by it; and a tax that becomes a money-making business is a solecism of the highest order of absurdity. Yet such is the fact. The treasury records prove it, and it will afford the Northeast a brilliant opportunity to manifest their disinterested affection to the West, by giving up their own profit in this tax, to relieve the West from the burthen it imposes upon her.

"8. Because the repeal of the duty will not materially diminish the revenue, nor delay the extinguishment of the public debt. It is a tax carrying money out of the treasury, as well as bringing it in. The issue is two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, perhaps the full amount which accrues on the kind of salt to which the abolition extends. The duty, and the fishing allowances bottomed upon it, falling together as they did when Mr. Jefferson was President, would probably leave the amount of revenue unaffected.

"9. Because it belongs to an unhappy period in the history of our government, and came to us, in its present magnitude, in company with an odious and repudiated set of measures. The maximum of twenty cents a bushel on salt was fixed in the year '98, and was the fruit of the same system which produced the alien and sedition laws, the eight per cent. loans, the stamp act, the black cockade, and the standing army in time of peace. It was one of the contrivances of that disastrous period for extorting money from the people, for the support of that strong and splendid government which was then the cherished vision of so many exalted heads. The reforming hand of Jefferson overthrew it, and all the superstructure of fishing allowances which was erected upon it. The exigencies of the late war caused it to be revived for the term of the war, and the interest of some, and the neglect of others, have permitted it to continue ever since. It is now our duty to sink it a second time. We profess to be disciples of the Jeffersonian school; let us act up to our profession, and complete the task which our master set us."