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on Home Valuation, will generally and almost inevitably be based on the invoice of the goods so assessed-it can hardly be otherwise. The appraisers may in rare instances disregard the invoice, but these are exceptions which establish the general rule. Now it is obvious enough that a British or French manufacturing establishment, which keeps an agent in New York for the sale of its fabrics, will invoice them to him somewhat lower than it will sell them, (taking no account in such invoice of rents, cost of machinery, superintendence, &c., for these, it will be considered, would have to be borne whether this particular parcel of goods were made for the American market or not.) So the maker will sell to his extensive and able customer, who buys by the $100,000 worth, cheaper than to the humbler trader who buys but to the extent of a few thousands. So far as this advantage of wealth and power over poverty and weakness is natural, it must be acquiesced in. But when the Government steps in to aggravate the disparity by charging the poorer and less favored importer a higher duty on his goods because they have cost him more, the injustice becomes intolerable. Here is the cause of the failure of ninetenths of the American importers of ten to twenty years ago. They had characters to maintain, their property was within the reach of our penal inflictions, and they cherished some reverence for the laws of their own country which could not be reasonably expected of the European agent or adventurer who came here to subserve certain mercantile purposes, make as much money in as short a time as possible, and return to enjoy it among his kindred and countrymen. We mean here to say nothing disrespectful to this class of residents among us. It is not their fault that our Government holds out to them temptations to fraud which all cannot be expected to withstand. That government which collects its Revenue by Ad Valorem duties which might as easily be Specific offers a direct premium to fraud and points out the way to effect it. Take the case of Woolens, for illustration, on which the new duty is thirty per cent.: one man imports $1,000,000 worth per annum and invoices them correctly, paying duties to the amount of $300,000. His neighbor imports a like quantity, but undervalues them an average of twenty per cent., paying but $240,000 duty. At the end of the year

he will very probably have cleared $50,000 by that year's business, while his honest neighbor has actually lost $10,000. The latter has just this alternative, to undervalue likewise or be ruined. He sees that he can be honest to his creditors only by being dishonest to the Government, and he resolves to cheat where no one (as he argues) will be harmed by it, rather than where the confidence of friends will be abused and his family beggared. Hence importation under ad valorem duties soon degenerates into a strife which shall undervalue most adroitly and extensively; hence Importations increase from year to year without a corresponding increase of Revenue. The sole remedy for this is Specific Duties, and these levied upon the weight of the goods imported if possible. The German Tariff or Zollverein is based entirely on weight. Measure is generally resorted to by other nations, on articles of which the value bears no proportion to the weight. But a tariff of uniformly ad valorem duties, based on the Foreign cost of the articles imported, is a standing offer of bounty to fraud which no civilized people has hitherto in this century thought of adopting. Mr. Webster, in his great speech of July 25th and 27th on the general subject, closed his array of testimony of practical merchants and manufacturers on this head with the letter of Benj. Marshall, giving reasons for his unqualified preference of Specific Duties, and continued:

“Well, now, does anybody gainsay this? Is there a merchant, Foreign or American, in the United States, who undertakes to contradict this opinion? Is there a man high or low who denies it? I know of none-I have heard of none. Sir, it has been the experience of this Government always, that the ad valorem system is open to innumerable frauds. What is the case with England? Has she rushed madly into the principle of Free-Trade done into ad valorem duties? Not at all-not at all. Sir, on the contrary, on every occasion of revision of the tariff of England, a constant effort has been made, and progress made in every case, to augment the number of specific duties and reduce the ad valorem duties. A gentleman in the other House (Mr. Seaman) has taken pains, which I have taken also, though I believe not quite so thoroughly as he-to go through the items of the British Tariff, and see what proportion of articles in that tariff are ad valorem and

what are specific. Now, sir, the result of that examination shows that at this day, in

ance of authority is a good deal the other way."

We will only add to this, that nearly every predecessor of Secretary Walker, who has attended to the subject-including such men as ALEX. HAMILTON, ALBERT GALLATIN, ALEX. J. DALLAS, and WM. H. CRAWFORD, have urged the conversion of all remaining ad valorem into specific duties, to the utmost possible extent, for ample reasons given. Against these we have the authority of Robert J. Walker.

this British Tariff, out of 600 articles 500 are specific. Everything that from its nature could be made specific is made specific-nothing is placed in the list of ad valorem duties but such as seem to be incapable of assessment in any other form. Well, sir, how do we stand then? We have the experience of our own government-we have the judgment of those most distinguished in the administration of our affairs-we have the production of proof, hundreds and hundreds of instances, of the danger of the ad valorem mode of assessing duties. What is arrayed against it? Every importer of the United States, without exA word now on the single point on ception, is against it. Sir, the administration has not a mercantile friend from here which an attempt has been made to enlist to the Penobscot that will come forward the passions of the poor in favor of the and give his opinion in favor of this sys- ad valorem system, and we leave this tem. I undertake to say there is not one. branch of the subject. It has been urged There may be members of the little Con- that ad valorem duties are peculiarly fagress to which the honorable member from vorable to the poor, since they consume Connecticut (Mr. Niles) referred-subordi- only the coarser and cheaper fabrics which nate officers about the custom house, influ- will pay less duty under the ad valorem enced by, I know not what considerations- mode of assessment than under the spewho may be found ready to sustain such a system. That I do not deny. But I say sumption that the poor do or should buy cific. But we demur entirely to the asthat no respectable importing merchant can be found between the Penobscot and Rich- articles of inferior cost or workmanship. mond, who will give his opinion in favor of The man whose income is but $200 per it, if he is an honest man, and gets his liv- year will of course buy cheaper kinds of ing by importation himself. Well, then, fabrics than his wealthy neighbor, but he how are we to decide? Against the author- practices a sorry economy if he buys the ity of our own experience? Against the poorest qualities of those kinds. Has not authority of these thousands of substantiated his wife judgment to realize that a dress facts? Against these cases now blushing of good gingham or even calico is a betwith recent fraud? Against the example not only of the English Government, but flimsy silk? So with everything else. ter purchase than one of shabby and against that of all the continental govern- We insist that the poor should not buy, ments-for the Zollverein carry their specific duties much farther? Against all this, we hope they do not buy, as Free Trade what have we-what have we? Why, we assumes that they inevitably and indishave the recommendation of the President putably must. of the United States and the Secretary of the Treasury-highly respectable persons-respectable in private life-respectable, and I may say eminent, in many walks of public life-but I must add, neither of them trained in the knowledge of commerceneither of them having had habits of intercourse with practical men of the cities, And yet here, in the first year of their administration-fresh to the duties thrown upon them, they come out with a recommendation of a change of system-they propose a new system adverse to all our own experience-hostile to everything that we have ever learned-different from the experience of every other country on the face of the earth-and which stands on the responsibility of their own individual opinions! I do not think that this is a fair balance of authority, and since nobody here will uphold it since nobody here will defend it, it is fair enough for me to say, with entire respect to the head of the Government, and the department of the treasury, that the bal

But then look at the case in another aspect. The Tariff of 1842 imposed a duty of $1 25 specific on each pair of men's boots or bootees imported. Was there a poor man from the St. John to the Sabine who paid a higher price for his boots because of that duty? Not one, we are confident. The great mass of our rural population never purchase a foreignmade boot whatever be the rate of duty, and they cannot be ignorant of the fact that they have obtained their boots as cheap since this duty was levied as under that of twenty per cent. ad valorem preceding it-or as they would if there had been no duty. But there is a small class in our cities who see fit to have their boots and other articles of dress made in Paris or elsewhere in Europe, and these have been required to pay $1 25 on each pair of boots toward the revenue of the country; 50 per cent. on their imported

ready-made clothing, &c. Will any man contend that this impost has raised the price of boots generally to our consumers? or that it has borne with especial severity on the poor? Yet how easily could a demagogue excite an ignorant, unreflecting mass to indignation against this aristocratic Whig Tariff, which taxes Farmer Hodges' cowhide boots worth $2 as much as the city exquisite's pair from Paris costing at least $6! Such are the data on which the Tariff of '42 has been assailed as peculiarly oppressive in its exactions of the poor.

We have not entered upon any elaborate confutation of Mr. Walker's doctrine, that the duty on an imported article is inevitably a tax of so much on the consumer, whether he buy an imported or a rival article of domestic production. It does seem to us that no man with eyes open can have lived through the last five years without having his attention arrested by some of the myriads of facts which overthrow this position. As we write these pages, the Caledonia arrives at Boston, with tidings that the bare probability of the passage of McKay's Tariff Bill had enhanced the price of iron in Great Britain. Reducing our iron duties has reduced the wages of our furnace men and colliers, and increased the gains of the British iron-masters. Who will dispute that this increase of price in England must subtract so much from the anticipated reduction of price here. Our Government will receive less revenue from a ton of imported iron, when the New Tariff shall have taken effect; but the British iron-master will have obtained a higher price for it, if no other circumstance shall interfere to prevent it.

If an adversary of Protection were challenged to name an article on which an increase of duty, by the act of 1842, had produced a corresponding increase of cost to our consumers, he would doubtless point at once to Sugar. This staple is produced to any extent in but a narrow corner of the Union, where the culture has by no means been brought to perfection; the business is in few hands, and the climate is not fully adapted to the growth of the cane. It has been taken for granted, almost universally, that our sugar duties, though beneficial to the Cotton-planting interest, by preventing a greater overstock of their staple, did undoubtedly enhance, by nearly their full amount, the general cost of Sugar in this country. Yet listen to an extract from the

powerful speech of Senator DAVIS, of Mass., in opposition to the tariff of 1846:

combat theory and theorists; but as it is "Mr. President, it is always difficult to most successfully done by acknowledged facts, I will now select some of the protected articles which are best known, and in most general use, to test this doctrine of two-fold taxation. The Secretary has not informed us what articles he places in this category, but it probably embraces Brown Sugar, which is extensively made in the United States. The import for consumption, in 1845, was 100,758,315 lbs.; the

gross duty upon which, at 2 cents a pound, market was $4,015,299, or a small fraction is $2,518,947. The value in the foreign short of four cents a pound. The first inquiry is, how has American production affected the price in the foreign market? What is it now compared with what it has been? The price current will answer this question. It may be found at pages 720 and 721, of Doc. 6, from the Secretary of the Treasury; and I will state enough to show its character. In 1816, it ranged from 14 to 16 cents a pound. In 1820, 8 to 12 cents. In 1825, 7 to 10 cents. In 1831, 5 to 7 cents. In 1836, 6 cents. In 1839-'40, 34 to 4 cents. In 1844-'5, 3 to 4 cents a pound. These prices mark the descent under American competition; but the effect is still more manifest whenever a short crop has occurred. In 1834-25, the crop of Louisiana was 110,000 hogsheads, and the price 5 to 6 cents. In 1835-26, the crop was 36,000 hogsheads, and the price rose till it reached 10 to 11 cents, or nearly doubled. In 1842-3, the crop was 140,000 hogsheads, and the price 34 to 4 cents. In the year following, 100,000 hogsheads, and the price rose to 5 and 6 cents. In the year following, which was 1844-5, the crop was 204,000 hogsheads, and the price was 3 to 4 cents. From these facts, it is manifest that American production has a great influence in ruling the market, and that the people are dependent on the success of the crop for cheap sugar. Mr. President, it is difficult, by any process of reasoning, to add strength to these facts. The average price of imported brown sugar in the foreign market was, in 1845, four cents, while that of Louisiana, upon the plantation, was three cents eight mills. These facts are disclosed by the evidence derived from the Treasury Department. To my mind the evidence seems clear that the value has been greatly reduced by home competition; and it is equally clear, that if we should cease to produce it, the price would advance nearly, if not quite, two-fold. Can the duty, under such circumstances, be said, in any just sense, to operate as a tax? But the Secretary insists, that when a duty is laid upon a foreign production, the duty

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is added to the price of the import, and also of its domestic rival.' The consumption of brown sugar in the United States is estimated at 350,000,000 pounds. We import 100,000,000 pounds; and consequently, 250,000,000 pounds are the product of the United States. If the duty of two-and-ahalf cents a pound is a tax upon this domestic rival, then the sugar-producers received, last year, as a bounty, $6,250,000, extorted from the pockets of the people. But is it not answer enough to this theory when I prove, from official documents, that 204,000,000 of this production was sold at an average price below the cost of sugar in foreign countries? This fact being established, I shall leave it for the advocates of the doctrine to maintain this theory of taxation upon domestic production, and I think it will put into requisition all their ingenuity."

To the same effect, and even yet more conclusive, is the demonstration of the effect of Protection on the price of CottonBagging, given in the speech of Hon. ROBERT TOOMBS, of Georgia, to the House, at an earlier day. No item in our successive Tariffs for Protection has been opposed with greater determination and acrimony than that looking to the home manufacture of our Cotton-Bagging. It has been stigmatized over and again

as an exorbitant tax on the entire Planting industry of the country, for the benefit of a few pampered manufacturers of bagging. Inch by inch the ground has been doggedly contested, the duty on bag ging being treated as more palpably and exorbitantly oppressive than almost any other. Inconveniently long as the following extract is, therefore, we do not feel willing to spare a single word of it; and we think every one who reads it will thank us for giving this testimony by a representative of cotton-planters to the palpably beneficent effects of Protection on their own business. Mr. Toombs says:

"The history of the trade in cottonbagging in the South for the last four years, has demonstrated the utter worthlessness of calculations based upon the theories of the friends of free trade. This is an article of almost universal consumption in the South. It was therefore selected to illustrate how much the cottonplanters, in the intemperate language of the friends of free trade, were robbed and plundered' by your tariff policy. Time has destroyed its efficiency for popular delusion. The results have satisfied many, even of the most prejudiced, that,

whatever may be the abstract truth of the theory of free trade, the trade in cottonbagging is an exception to the rule.

To this class there are some exceptions. The Secretary of the Treasury has the unscrupulous boldness to assert, in the face of the most overwhelming facts demonstrating the fallacy of his opinion, that the duty on cotton-bagging is equivalent to 55.20 per cent. ad valorem on Scotch bagging, and to 123.11 per cent. on the gunnybag; and yet the whole revenue from these duties has fallen to $66,064 50. Nearly the entire amount, therefore, of this enormous tax makes no addition to the revenue, but inures to the benefit of about thirty manufacturers.' Mr. Walker intends, in the above extract from his report, to induce the cotton-planters of the South to believe that these assumed duties of 55.20 and 123 11 per cent. ad valorem (neither of which are true in point of fact) operate as taxes to their full amount, both upon the foreign and domestic bagging, and accordingly raise the prices of both the foreign and domestic bagging to the amount of these duties; and that, with the exception of the small amount of revenue collected upon the foreign article, the entire amount of this enormous tax inures to the benefit of about thirty manufacturers.' As different amounts of duty are levied upon different foreign competihave thrown new light upon this peculiar tors with the domestic article, it might system of political economy to have informed the country whether the Kentucky bagging ought to rise 55.20 per cent. or 123.11 per cent. by the imposition of these duties. We are unable to get any key to this mystery from the actual prices of the commodity since the duties were imposed; for every description of the article, both foreign and domestic, has declined in price since the passage of the act of 1842. Since the introduction of the business of making cotton-bagging in Kentuckysince our own countrymen have come into competition with the foreigner in produ less than one-third of its average price becing it-the price of bagging has fallen to fore that period. It is at this moment manufactured in the United States and sold to the consumer for less money than it cost in Dundee when the Tariff of 1842 was passed, and less than its present cost there, according to the price fixed by Mr. Walker for estimating the ad valorem duty upon it. The last position is a mere matter of calculation upon Mr. Walker's estimate of the duty; the first I shall proceed to prove by conclusive evidence. Mr. Calhoun believed, in 1842, that the present duty on cotton-bagging would raise the price to the extent of the highest duty, and thus greatly injure the cotton-planter. therefore vehemently opposed it. It is

He

due to candor to state that it was the pre-
vailing opinion, at that time, among gen-
tlemen of both political parties at the
South, that this duty would injuriously
affect the cotton-planter; hence it met
with general opposition then from both
parties. Testing this duty by his princi-
ples of political economy, Mr. Calhoun
worked out, with mathematical certainty,
as he supposed, the precise amount of in-
jury which the cotton-planters were to
sustain by this duty. During the debate

on the Tariff of 1842 in the Senate of the
United States, the duty on cotton-bagging
being under consideration, it appears from
the report contained in the Congressional
Globe and Appendix, page 802, that
"Mr. Calhoun observed that this was a
subject in which those whom he represented,
and the whole Southern region, were deeply
interested. He submitted the following:-
A statement of the additional cost on the cotton
crop of the year (estimated at 2,000,000 bags)
in consequence of the proposed duty on cot-
ton-bagging, rope, and twine.
The cost on a bag, estimated at

400 pounds, 5 1-2 yards bag-
ging, at 5 cents the square
yard, equal to 6 1-9 cents the
running yard, and equal to 68
per cent. ad valorem on the
invoice,

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Six pounds of rope, at 6 cents per pound, and about equal to 110 per cent, ad valorem, Quarter of a pound of twine, at 6 cents duty per pound, and about equal to 30 or 40 per cent. ad valorem,

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"These prices of bagging, rope, and twine are taken from the quotations of their prices at Louisville for the last three months. I believe they are not lower than the average for the last twelve months. That they are accurate I know by actual purchases of those articles in that market, within a few days past, for my own use. These prices show that bagging now sells for within less than two and a half cents of Mr. Calhoun's estimate of the duty, and that rope now sells for but a little more $00 33 11-18 than a half of his estimate of the duty. It also appears that cotton-bagging is now sold by the manufacturers in this country for less than the cost of Dundee bagging in Dundee, during the year 1842. In the report of the same debate it is stated, Mr. Calhoun read a letter, from one of the first merchants in South Carolina, quoting the price of Scotch bagging, fit for the cottonplanters, at five pence per yard.' Other gentlemen submitted different statements. Mr. Benton, after reviewing these different statements, in the same debate, saysAbout thirteen or fourteen cents may be assumed as the average or usual cost of the article in Dundee and Inverness, whence it comes.' A comparison of the present prices of domestic bagging in this country, at the factories, with these Scotch prices, show that we now make good bagging in Kentucky more than five cents per yard less than it cost in Dundee in 1842, and for three or four cents per yard less than the present price in Scotland, ascertaining the price according to Mr. Walker's estimate of it for fixing the ad valorem duty. It is now generally sold in the larger markets for distribution at less than the Scotch price in 1842, when the tariff bill was passed. It is also a well-known fact, to every cotton-planter, that, notwithstanding the duty, and the cheapness of its production, the gunny-bag has continued to fall in almost exact proportion with other descriptions of bagging, showing how little influence the cost of production may have over the market price of a commodity in

Cest per bag, $00 71 1-9 "2,000,000 of bags, at 71 1-9 cents per bag, is equal to $1,422,222. The gross value of the crop, estimated at 7 1-2 cents per pound, would be $60,000,000. And the additional cost, in consequence of the duty on these articles, would be equal to 21-2 per cent-that is, 21-2 bags in the hundred, or 1 bag in 37, and 54,000 bags in the crop; and estimating the number of factories for bagging at 21 in the United States, it would be equal to 2,571 to each. The reduction of the duty to 3 1-2 cents per yard would reduce the cost on the crop to about $1,200,000. '

"The bill was passed; the duty was imposed; the test of experience was applied to this calculation, and found it to be wholly erroneous. Bagging, rope, and twine, instead of rising in proportion to the duty, did not rise at all in price, but fell. Instead of laying an additional price upon their bagging, rope, and twine, equal to the duty, and thereby levying upon us a tax of two bales and a half of our cotton in the hundred, as Mr. Calhoun supposed, the Kentucky manufacturers of these articles were compelled by the workings of the inevitable laws of trade to sell them much less than they did before. Instead of getting 71 1-9 cents additional price for the

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