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H. OF R.]

The Tariff.

[MAY 8, 1830

tobacco, has been, not thirty-seven millions, at which the sumption, and pay duties; and that, as the staple-growing gentleman estimates it, but thirty-two millions, (or, in ex- States export but thirty-two millions, the other States must act figures, thirty-two million sixteen thousand four hun-export twenty-nine millions at least, and pay taxes on that dred and sixty-five dollars,) and the average annual export amount of the imports, on the principle of the gentleman of the single staple of cotton alone is not thirty millions, himself, and those who hold this new theory in common but less than twenty-five millions of dollars. with him.

The average amount of imports for consumption, for the same period, I have not had the means of estimating. For the last five years, however, I have done it, in the following manner: I have taken the entire import, and deducted from it the amount of foreign merchandise re-cxported. The remainder may be considered as giving, in a series of years, the average amount of foreign merchandise imported for consumption. This annual average I find to be, for the last five years, just sixty-one millions ($61,002,658) of dollars.

The first remark, then, that I shall make, in reply to the statement of the gentleman from South Carolina, is, that, even on his own principles, he has greatly overstated the amount of duty paid by the staple-growing States. The average export of the staples is thirty-two millions, not thirty-seven; and of the chief of them, cotton, twentyfive millions, not thirty. The average amount of imports, consumed in the country, is sixty-one millions. Of these, the staples in the gentleman's own view of the subject, pay but thirty-two millions, very little more than a half. On the other, twenty-nine millions, if it be only granted to me that they are not given to the consumer, that they are somehow or other bought and paid for, the planter of the staples does not pay the duties. These twenty-nine millions, out of sixty-one, whatever they consist of, tea, coffee, silk, wine, cutlery, woollens, linens-whatever the articles are, must be paid for by the consumer; and paid for by some articles produced by him, or the fruits of his labor, in one form or other. In a word, on the gentleman's own view of the subject, (which, however, I shall strive to show is unfounded in principle,) the States that grow cotton, rice, and tobacco, pay but one-half instead of twothirds of the duties. With respect to the remaining half, the rest of the Union may, with equal propriety, adopt the language which the gentleman puts into the mouth of the southern planter. We pay the duties on them, for they are paid for by our produce, or the fruits of our industry.

It is true we have no great staples. The gentleman from South Carolina said, we exported nothing but a few hundred thousand dollars worth of potash.

It is true, our products do not strike the imagination like those of the genial South. They are frequently named, only to be derided. Another gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. BLAIR] speaks of our clocks and notions; and I ought, perhaps, to thank him for not adding wooden nutmegs to the list. But the products which we exchange for our foreign merchandise represent the skill, the industry, the freedom of our Irborious free citizens. Do the exports of other States represent any thing better!

We are told of the rich fruits which a Divine Providence has bestowed exclusively on the southern portion of the country, and are left to infer a somewhat painful contrast with its less favored regions. Sir, I will be led into no such contrast. I admire, as much as any gentleman on this floor, the display of the bountiful provision which has been made for our southern brethren; and I wish them cordially the full enjoyment of it. I have witnessed it, under circumstances to give it all its force, upon the senses and the imagination, having, in the space of three weeks, in the course of last year, passed from a region covered with ice and snow, to one where the orange tree and the pomegranate were in flower, and the sugar cane and cotton plant covered the soil. I feel and appreciate the richness of these natural bounties; I rejoice in them as the gifts of a kind Providence to my native land. Haud equidem invideo; miror magis. Our lot is cast in a region less favored in this respect, but not therefore to be disparaged. No, not in the amount of its products, which equals that of those rich staples.

Then, too, is to be considered, and this alone is an answer to much of the gentleman's argument, that these southern staples represent no small amount of the fruits of the labor of the other States. But for this, it would be absolutely unaccountable and incredible that three millions of the population should export to even one-half of the amount of the foreign merchandise consumed. Let any man consider the distribution which the cotton planter would make of the avails of his crop, if he brought it himself to Charleston or New Orleans, and exchanged it in the way of barter for his supplies, and he will find that a good portion represents the labor of the West and North. This explains what would otherwise be inexplicable, that in a

sumption of imported merchandise, three millions of the population, confined to one part of the Union, should export even one-half of the returns, and the great and rich consuming States of Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, and all New England, not the other half.

The solution is, that what, in its last form, is a southern staple, is, in reality, in part, the produce of the other por tions of the country. Of the European articles received in return, the plauting States pay tax on that portion which they consume, aud no more. No more, on the gentleman's own principles; for every consumer is a producer. He pays for what he consumes by what he produces, and can pay in no other manner. And what he consumes he takes with all its burdens.

[Mr. McDUFFIE said he spoke of exports to Europe.] But if we send nothing but a few potashes to Europe, I should like to know what Europe gets for all her pro-country so large as this, and indulging in so large a conducts, which we consume. There may be but one link, or ten in the chain of communication; but, eventually, the great amount of European produce, which the northern and middle States consume, must be paid for by the exportation of the fruits of the labor of those States, and for this reason the duties on that merchandise must, on the gentleman's principles, be paid for by those States. But the truth is, our exports are not quite so insignificant, as to be passed over without enumeration. The rice, which he thinks alone worthy, with two other southern staples, to be specified, was, last year, but about one. quarter part of the vegetable food exported. The fisheries, in their various branches, yielded over one million eight hundred thousand dollars for exportation. The productions of the forest fell but a little short of four millions; and various articles of manufactures exported, amounted to nearly six millions. In addition to this was the great item of tonnage, the value of which, in its total amount my colleague [Mr. GORHAM] has estimated at eleven millions per annum. These are the products by which we pay for our imported merchandise. It matters not in what form the payment is made. It may be rice, cotton, and tobacco. It may be fish, timber, or freight. The result is, that sixty-one millions are annually imported for con

But it is replied to this, although the southern States do not directly consume the whole of what is brought from Europe in exchange for the staple products exported by them, yet that the various articles of supply which they obtain from the manufacturing States (the indirect exchange of their staples) come charged higher by all the amount of the duty. In reference to my present purpose, which is to refute the new doctrine, (that the exporter, and not the consumer of the article imported, pays the tax) it is a sufficient rejoinder to this, that, in this case,

MAY 8, 1830.]

The Tariff.

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the planter pays the tax as a consumer, not as a producer. | cle. But this case can never exist longer than is required To this point, in fact, we return at the end of every illus- for the market to rectify itself, from an unnatural tempotration, and we see in it the entire fallacy of the novel pro-rary state. No act and no power can keep two articles positions advanced on this subject.

permanently in the market, which are produced at different cost, and sell at the same price. Let the experiment be tried with coins of gold and silver, whose nominal value is the same, and whose intrinsic value is different. It is imagined, I believe, that foreign imports, competing in our market with our own manufactured articles, the former paying duties and the latter not, do precisely form a case of a taxed article coming in competition with an untaxed one, in which the producer pays the tax. But not at all. By an untaxed article, in this case, is meant one unbur dened in any way; one produced as cheap as the taxed article, with the exception of the tax. In this case, of course, it is plain that the producer, if he will bring his taxed article to the market, must pay the tax himself. But if the untaxed article costs as much, for any reason, as the taxed article with the duty upon it, the two articles will sell for the same price, and the consumer must pay the tnx; he cannot throw the burden on the producer, because he cannot, by refusing to take the taxed article, get the untaxed one cheaper.

There is, then, no case where, in a regular and permanent course of trade, the consumer throws the tax on the producer; or, what is the same thing, in which, if the tax were repealed, the price would not fail.

Another consideration will put this in a still clearer light. The gentleman from South Carolina maintains that the planter pays the tax on the imported articles received in exchange for his exported staples; and this tax he puts at an average of forty-five per cent. Now, then, it is clear, that, if this tax were removed, if the planter had formerly paid it, he would now save this forty-five per cent.; he would put it in his pocket. South Carolina, for instance, supposing her now to be making no profit whatever from her agricultural staples, would, if the tariff were repealed, make forty-five per cent on the yearly amount of the crop; and each planter would receive that clear income. Out of every one hundred bales which he sent to market, forty-five would be clear profit, supposing him now to be making absolutely nothing. This, I say, is the consequence of the new doctrine, that the planter pays the tax. But can any man seriously believe it, that such a state of things would last a day, or any longer than would be necessary for the adjustment to take place, which is inseparable from every change in the condition of a branch of industry. The planter would not, probably, pocket one farthing of this forty-five per cent.; and why not? Because those who were disposed to hold up their cotton at the old price, and make a profit of forty-five per cent., The idea, then, that the southern planter, and he alone, would find neighbors content with forty, and who would bears the tax on the imports purchased by his produce, sell at forty, and this would bring the market price down that he alone cannot throw the burden on the consumer; to forty per cent. profit. But thirty-five per cent. would or, the contrary, that on him alone the consumer throws content others, and thirty per cent. would content others, the burden, is as unfounded as it is paradoxical. The till, in the end, those, whose necessities obliged them to sixty millions of foreign articles introduced for consumpsell, would be ready to sell at the old rate, that is, forty-tion are purchased by sixty millions worth of the produce five per cent, cheaper than they sold while they paid the of the labor of the consumers. This consumption is scattax, now taken off. This would bring down the price of the tered most diffusively over the country. If it take place whole article in the market, and the planter would find that to a greater extent in one section than another, that section the only effect of producing his staple forty-five per cent. was not the southern States. Now it is said, of all the cheaper, would be that he would have to sell it forty-five producers of the articles given in exchange for these sixty per cent. cheaper; and how would this mend his condition? millions, the southern planters, who furnish about half, I shall be told, perhaps, that if the price of the article cannot throw the tax on the consumer; and why not? But, were thus reduced, the demand for it would be propor- to support this proposition, no substantial reason appears tionably increased, and so much the more would be raised to be given. Every other branch of industry struggles and exported from the southern States. But this would with the like competition as cotton planting. The gentlenot remedy the evil now complained of, that of low prices. man says that the Carolina cotton planter comes in comIt would only increase the production at the present prices. | petition with the Brazilian, in a market where the CaroliCotton lands now uncultivated would be brought into culti-nian pays a tax on the goods he receives in return of fortyvation. If the state of the cotton planters be such as is de scribed to us, this is an event rather to be deprecated than wished for. No advantage, therefore, would accrue to the planters from the repeal of the tax, beyond that which he shares proportionably with every other member of the community, in the alleviation of the public burdens.

five per cent., and the Brazilian of only fifteen. In other words, the Carolinian, selling at the same nominal price as the Brazilian, takes pay in coin containing forty-five per cut. alloy, and the Brazilian in coin containing only fifteen per cent. alloy. Such a state of things is wholly impossible, under the known laws of trade; but, supposing it possible, it would prove that the American cotton planter could, and did defy all competition.

The gentleman from South Carolina admitted, as a gene ral rule, that the consumer paid the tax; but he said the case of the southern planters was an exception to this There is no process, by which the northern consumer rule; they were a class of producers, who could not throw throws off the tax, which is not open to the southern the burden of the tax on the consumer, but must pay it planter. It is said that the northern consumer can change themselves. My worthy colleague [Mr. GORHAM] admit- his pursuit, can emigrate, but that the southern planter ted two cases where the producer did pay the tax levied must live and die on his plantation. Is this so? Certainly on the articles imported in exchange for his produce: one not. There is no form in which a large capital can exist, where the producer consumes all the return: the other in which more of it will be easily transferable, than an where the taxed article comes in competition with an un-investment in a cotton plantation. The whole Southwest taxed article of the same kind. But the first case is, of is open to the cotton planter. The part of it which is setcourse, only a nominal exception. The planter is taxed. tled, has been mostly settled by him. He has found a on his consumption, as every other consumer is. If he choose to consume the entire fruit of his industry unproductively, he pays, of course, the consumption tax on all he produces; but he pays it as a consumer, not as producer. This, then, does not bear out the new theory in principle. The other case, in which the consumer, it is admitted, But the cotton, rice, and tobacco planters have another would throw the tax on the producer, is that where the resource from the burdens of the tariff, created by the taxed article comes in competition with the untaxed arti- Įtariff itself; a resource, I am well persuaded, thus far so

VOL. VI.-114,

new soil and cheap lands, and ready access to market. Unquestionably the cause why the staple is cheaper, is, that for these and other reasons it can be produced cheaper; not (as is maintained) because the difference of price comes out of the planter's pocket.

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effectual, that it has been more beneficial to the planting the botany of the tropics, and find a species of the cotton States, than all the other provisions of the laws have to the plant which would thrive in Carolina. Our northern mannmanufacturing States. It is my deliberate opinion, that facturers complained that a duty should be laid on the hitherto the States most benefited by the laws for protec- raw material required for their fabrics, not to protect, tion of manufactures, lie south of the Potomac. The south- not to encourage a branch of southern industry, but for ern States have a monopoly of a species of property, in- what seemed the chimerical speculation of creating a new creasing in numbers, and which would, under other circum- kind of culture. General Hamilton said the duty ought stances, decrease in value: I mean their slaves. Their to be repealed; but it was kept on. It was then a protectnumbers are supposed to amount to two millions, and their ing duty. It protected southern agriculture, at the exaverage value at present, I am told, may be safely taken pense of northern manufactures. I believe our southern at two hundred dollars each; forming a money capital of brethren then did not deem it either unconstitutional or op four hundred millions. Now, in the nature of things, and in pressive. It was not the only duty of the same character the present state of the cotton, rice, and tobacco market, in the first tariff, that of 1789, for indigo, hemp, and mathe value of the slaves to their masters would be constant-nufactured tobacco were burdened with duties, for the ly declining. The sugar culture, which has grown up in same reason. But such was the state of the cotton marLouisiana, under the tariff laws, has created a new demand ket thirty years ago. Within the same period, the finest for labor, which is met principally from the old Atlantic of the sugar islands has, in a manner, been blotted from States. I know that this trade is regarded as discreditable the map of the world. In 1788, the value of the sugar to the South; that the last thing the planter will part with, produced in St. Domingo was twenty millions of dollars; is his servants. But in the division of estates, in the execu- in 1822, the last year for which I have official information. tion of judgments, in the punishment of misconduct, cases it was but one hundred and thirty thousand dollars. Do arise, under the laws of the country, in which these sales gentlemen think the process is to stop here? I am no protake place, and by them the demand for Louisiana is sup- phet, sir; I pretend not to calenlate the malignant aspect plied. I am told that the effect of this demand on the va- of the stars for other regions. But I see nothing in the fue of slaves is equal to one hundred per cent.; that the fated islands of the West Indian archipelago, that looks whole mass of this property is enhanced or kept from fall-like stability. Thus far the planting interest of the South ing to that extent; in other words, that the labor of the has been more benefited by the tariff, in the way I have South, now amounting to a moneyed capital of four hun- described, than any other interest; and taking history and dred millions, would not, but for this circumstance, be experience for the guide, he is a bold man, who will unworth more than two hundred millions at this moment dertake to fix the time when this state of things will cease and that rapidly declining. Here, then, is one operation of to exist. the tariff, creating to the southern planter a capital of two hundred millions of dollars, or twelve millions annually. Can any man point out any such benefit, accruing from the same source, to the manufacturing States? The culture of sugar has already reached an average crop, probably, of seventy thousand hogsheads. The last season was a bad one, but the two preceding seasons averaged that amount. This, with the molasses, is worth about eight millions of dollars. Of these eight millions, the West, for food and machinery, gets perhaps a million and a half. A single iron-master, on the Cumberland river, in Tennessee, Bold last year to the sugar planters fifty-six thousand dollars of articles fabricated at his furnaces; and twenty-five steam engines, for sugar mills, were furnished by a house on the Ohio river. The North supplies the sugar planter with a million of dollars in clothing, miscellaneous articles, and tonnage. Three millions of dollars go to the planting States for slaves; and I have the opinion in wring of persons as well informed as any in the United States, that the effect of this demand is what I have stated it to be.

I shall be told, perhaps, that this state of things is tem porary. I answer, it exists now; and while it exists, and as long as it exists, the most active benefits of the tariff are south of the Potomac. How long this state of things will last, I do not know; no man knows. I believe it will be a distant day, before the supply overtakes the demand, and before Louisiana will cease to depend for her labor on other States. And before that day arrives, who shall foresee what explosion may take place in the tropics, (the volcanic region of the political as of the physical world,) which will make Louisiana a much more important region in the sugar market than it is now? Thirty years ago, the West Indies were to the cotton market what they now are to the sugar market. Thirty years ago, and our northern cotton mills, then just erected, and on a small scale, went to the West Indies for their cotton. A member of Congress, from South Carolina, expressed the opinion, that, if a good seed could be procured, cotton would, with proper protection, grow in Carolina: and, accordingly, a duty of three cents a pound was laid on the cotton consumed by our infant manufacturing establishments, to enable our southern brethren to go and study

It is, I suppose, this view of the subject, which has lately occasioned the adoption of the following resolutions by the Legislature of Louisiana, unanimously, I believe, in the Senate of that State, and with a very small dissenting minority in the House of Representatives.

"Resolved, by the Senate and House of Representatives of the State of Louisiana, in General Assembly convened, That the General Assembly of this State do not concur in the views and sentiments expressed by the resolutions of the Legislature of the State of Mississippi, relative to the tariff of 1828; and that the Legislature of this State does not perceive any unconstitutionality in adopting such measures.d

"Resolved, &c. That we highly approve of the resolutions of the Legislature of the State of Vermont, by which they have declared the law of 1828, on the tariff, to be constitutional, expedient, and harmless to the southern States, or any other of our sister States.

"Resolved, &c. That our Senators in Congress be instructed, and our Representatives requested, to accede to and support such measures as those that are contemplated by the law of 1828 on the tariff."

It will be recollected that this is the expression of the opinion of a State, by no means exclusively a sugar-planting State; of a State of which cotton is still the great sta ple. I pretend not to assign the motives of the gentleman from South Carolina, in leaving untouched the duty on foreign sugars, while he proposes to remove almost every duty which protects the industry of the middle and northern States. I do not blame him for retaining a duty which is of vital importance to the southern country. But, on the same principle on which he is willing to retain the duty on sugar, he must allow me to vote against the re peal of those parts of the law which he desires to abrogate, but which are important to my constituents. Shall he except from a sweeping repeal of the laws, the single feature of it, which is so signally beneficial to the planting interest, that it has attached one entire planting State to the protecting system? and shall not I oppose the indiscriminate repeal of that whole system, involving the rain of all the interests which have grown up under it!

And here I may observe, in reply to a remark made by

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the gentleman from New York, [Mr. CAMBRELENG] ou the subject of voting for protecting duties from motives of personal interest, that no such motive operates on me, I reside, it is true, in a manufacturing country, but have no interest in manufacturing establishments, nor any which is beneficially affected by them; nor, if every factory were burned down to-morrow, would it concern me in any other way than such a waste of property would concern every other citizen in the community. But to return to the argument.

I have endeavored thus far, in reply to the gentleman from South Carolina, to re-establish the doctrine that the tax falls on the consumer. I shall now offer a consideration to prove that this tax is not so oppressive as has been represented. The tax falls not on the immediate, but on the ultimate consumer: that is, on the individual by whom, in its last form, it is unproductively consumed, either as a necessary of life, or as an article to which habit and custom have given the character of a necessary of life. The tax on such articles, in a country like this, where there is a perfect equality of rights, a great similarity of condition, unusual facility in change of situation and pursuit, and a boundless region of new land, is, in reality, levied on the entire consumption, or, what is the same thing, the entire income of the country. The moment any one pursuit is taxed above the average of the other, capital is driven from it, till the equilibrium is brought about. The burden laid on imported articles is, therefore, equally diffused over the entire income of the country. What is that in

come !

The gentleman from South Carolina has estimated it at three hundred and fifty millions per annum-I am inclined to think this much too small. I would rate it at not less than one thousand millions. Let us consider a few items that must enter into the estimate. The population is at least twelve millions; the federal numbers have ever been estimated to amount to twelve millions.

The food of 12,000,000 of persons, at 40 cents per week, which is but 5.7 cents per day, or $20 75 per annum, would amount to Clothing for 12,000,000, at $17 per an

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249,000,000

204,000,000

[H. OF R.

ing the annual income of the people of the United States. I mean, seriously, that if any gentleman thinks I take it too high at one thousand millions, I will let him reduce it one-half, to five-hundred millions. A protecting tax of eight millions is, at that rate, one and three-fifths per cent. upon the income of the country. This is the burden which is laid by the protecting system on our industry.

In reply to the suggestion that the southern planter bad the option to take specie in return for his exports, it was argued by the gentleman from South Carolina, that England, having no mines, had no specie to give; and that if she had, we had no use for it, as it is not an article to be consumed. It was justly urged by my colleague, [Mr. GORHAM] that though England had no mines, she was nevertheless the great specie market of the world. In reply to the second objection of the gentleman, that we could not take specie to advantage, because we do not wish to consume it, I observe, that, though not consumable itself, it is the representative of all consumable things. If the manufactured articles to be imported, are, as the gentleman says, taxed forty-five per cent, he cannot suppose that, in the great emporium of the world, the English market, there is no article of commerce, and no course of trade in which the southern planter could not make a more advantageous return investment.

But if the exporter paid the tax, as the gentleman says, when he takes goods thus burdened, it would be not merely his interest to take specie-the Liverpool trader would compel him to take it. On the supposition that the producer of the staples consents to receive in pay goods really worth to him forty-five per cent. less than their nominal value, and less than their cost to the manufacturer in England, the English manufacturer would choose to pay him in specie. For one hundred pounds' worth of cotton he would offer him a cash price a little in advance of the fifty-five pounds, which is all (on this supposition) that the planter is to get in goods. The goods, as a consequence, would not be exported to this country. The demand for them would increase, and with it the price which they would command. Specie, meantime, would rise in England, and in the result, as the want of the goods was felt in America, the planter would be enabled to throw the tax on the consumer: it would, of course, cease to be his interest to take payment in specie instead of 75,000,000 goods; and trade would return to its natural channel. This is the process which constantly goes on; and specie is the $528,000,000 chief vehicle by which those transfers of capital are ef This is the amount of the estimated cost of the food and fected, which prevent burdens from accumulating upon clothing of the population, and the food of the domestic any one branch. animals. I do not think it extravagant to assume that, over and above the necessary annual consumption for food and clothing, the entire annual expenditure for houses, ships, and every other kind of building; for roads, canals, and every other kind of public and private improvement; for public institutions of all kinds, together with the amount of income annually saved and added, in these or any other forms, to the accumulating wealth of the country, ought to be taken at an amount at least equal. I therefore set down the whole annual income of the country at one thousand millions of dollars.

num,
The food of all the animals, estimated as
equivalent to three millions of horses, at $25
each per annum,

I will but mention one other consequence which would flow from the new doctrine, and then leave that part of the subject to the candid judgment of the House. The produce of the staple pays the duty on the imported article, says the new theory. This duty, in the average, is said by the gentleman to be forty-five per cent. I believe it to be much less; but the amount, at present, is immaterial. Whatever the aggregate be, the separate duties vary in amount. Cottons are said, by the chairman of the Committee on Commerce, to range from twenty-seven to one hundred and twenty-five per cent.: woollens from On this annual income there are charged, say twenty-forty-five to one hundred and sixty-eight; and iron from one four millions of dollars. This is a tax of two and fourtenths per cent, which cannot be called a very heavy bur den. But it must be remembered that a part only of the tax on the articles imported is to be set down to the protecting system. A very considerable part of the duties would, at all events, be assessed for revenue. If I should admit, however, (what is very far above the truth,) that eight millions out of the twenty-four are a protecting tax, and that to this extent the manufacturing system is a tax on the income of the country, it would amount to oneeighth part of one per cent. on this income! And now, sir, I will not cavil at a few hundred millions in estimat

hundred and twenty-five to one hundred and eighty. All these articles, with all their duties, are imported in exchange for southern staples, and the southern planter pays the duty, says the theory. Of course, the first planter who gets to market, will take the article least burdened. The next comer will take the next most favorable article; while the unfortunate individual who comes last, and who has (by the supposed iniquitous operation of these laws) to furnish to the customer, out of his one hundred pounds' worth of cotton, one hundred pounds' worth of iron, will have, in addition to all his cotton, to pay out of his pocket eighty pounds sterling. And the new theory supposes

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that this kind of trade has been carried on for years between the United States and Great Britain.

[MAY 8, 1830.

The gentleman from New York [Mr. CAMBRELENG] reminds me that, by a subsequent law, it is now admitted. But the abstract of that law, given in the annual report from the Treasury Department, shows that the duty is still so high as to leave the prohibition in fact unaffected; and it was declared by Mr. Huskisson “to be the object of the bill to give protection up to a certain point, and to exclude the introduction of foreign corn as much as pos sible."

The gentleman from South Carolina made a remark or two upon the English corn laws, denying that they furnished any just ground for the protecting system in America, or that the American manufacturers wished their repeal. It certainly, however, is an opinion resting on unsuspicious authority, that the existence of the British laws restricting the importation of foreign grain was an efficient cause of the adoption of the system of protecting A moment's reflection will show us that no administraduties in this country. On this subject, Mr. Addington, tion of that Government could break down the system of the British charge d'affaires at Washington, (whose corres- the corn laws, if its extent is at all what it is described to pondence with his Government shows him to have been a be. Twenty-four millions sterling is the interest, at three very attentive observer of the passage of the law of 1824, per cent., of a capital of four thousand millions of dolthrough Congress,) thus writes to Mr. Canning, in a letter fars. To repeal the corn laws would be to make that bearing date 30th May, 1824: "I have only to add that, capital change hands: enough of itself to cause a revoluhad no restrictions on the importation of foreign grain ex- tion. The burden of the corn laws is said to equal that isted in Europe generally, and especially in Great Britain, of the national debt. To pay the national debt, (that is, I have little doubt that the tariff would never have passed to reproduce the capital which has been consumed, of through either House of Congress, since the great agricul- which the debt is the representative,) would no doubt be tural States, and Pennsylvania especially, the main mover a great public benefit. But to sponge it out, by an act of the question, would have been indifferent, if not opposed of bankruptcy, would be assessing it on the creditors of the Government, instead of the whole people, and would convulse society. Similar effects would attend the abolition of the corn laws, if their effect is what it is described to be.

to its enactment."

It is said that, if the British duties on foreign corn were repealed, we could not export it-that we should be undersold by the corn of the North of Europe. But, in point of fact, whenever the British ports have been opened, we have exported it to that country, and we do constantly_export it to markets where the corn of the North of Europe meets ours. When the canal is completed from the Ohio river to Lake Erie, and other channels of communication now in progress are open, so that corn from the interior shall come to be transported, by a canal or a railroad, to the seaboard, I cannot be induced to believe that corn, which can be and is raised for twelve and a half cents the bushel, will be undersold by any thing which grows in Poland or the Crimea, in any market in Europe.

But if this repeal could take place, and every thing else go on in England as before, it is very doubtful whether it would operate to the ruin of our manufacturers, as the gentleman from South Carolina supposes. The sum of twenty-four millions a year probably does not amount to eight per cent. on the annual product of the industry of Great Britain. If the whole of the relief produced by the repeal were applied to the reduction of the price of all the products of labor, it would amount to a reduction of only eight per cent.-au injurious reduction, no doubt to our manufacturers, but not a third as formidable as the frauds daily practised under the revenue laws, against which it is the object of the bill before us to guard.

The gentleman from South Carolina says that the manufacturers would deprecate the repeal of the corn laws, The gentleman from South Carolina, having endeavored because, by enabling the British manufacturer to work to show that the revenue of the country is unequally colcheaper, and export his fabrics cheaper, our establishments lected, attempted to establish the fact that it was as unewould be undermined and ruined. If this be so, we cer- qually distributed; that, being mostly collected in the tainly ought to deprecate the repeal. If the grain-grow- South, it was mostly disbursed in the North; and, in this ing States, as Mr. Addington says, have caused the pas- connexion, he enlarged on a topic, which he thought had sage of laws, under which a great amount of property has not been duly considered in national politics-the effect of been invested in the manufacturing States, it would be a Government expenditure on the industry of a country. very strange if these last States (which are not grain-I am inclined to think this effect greatly overrated, at growing) did not deprecate the repeal of the corn laws, which was to ruin their manufactures, without affording them any equivalent.

least in a country like ours, where annual expenditure must be met by annual taxation. Any State in the Union, said the gentleman, would be willing to tax its citizens one It is not my province to comment on the British corn million, for the sake of having the Government expend laws; but as it is frequently stated that Great Britain has two millions within its limits. The State that should do set the example of repealing her protecting system, I this, would, in my opinion, act very unwisely. Governthink it proper to observe that she has repealed those ment expenditure is not Government donation: for the parts of it which protected nothing, and she retains those two millions expended within the State, two millions of parts that exclude foreign articles, and, above all, the corn its property are consumed or carried away, and, if you Jaws. And this is described to be more burdensome than please, advantageously; but it is only the profit on two all the other taxes of the kingdom-equal to the whole millions that is gained by the State or its citizens; and the burden of the national debt. The gentleman from South State that would tax its citizens one million of dollars, to Carolina estimates the annual burden of the corn laws at enable its citizens to receive the ordinary commercial twenty four millions of pounds sterling. A popular profit on two, would act a very unwise part. writer on political economy, (Mr. M'Culloch) in one aspect As to the alleged inequality of the distribution, I beof the subject, is disposed to estimate it at thirty-six mil- lieve a careful examination would show it to be much lions of pounds sterling. It is plain that no ministry could smaller than the gentleman represents it. I admit that break down a system that involved a capital of thirty-six there is an inequality in the distribution of the payment, or twenty-four millions sterling. Mr. Canning introduced, on account of the public debt: a larger proportion of this and passed through the House of Commons, a bill, ad- payment is made north of the Potomac, than south of it. mitting foreign corn on a graduated duty, which was But this is because more was lent to the Government north abandoned, on the adoption in the House of Lords of an of the Potomac, than south of it. A part of the national amendment proposed by the Duke of Wellington; and debt was created by this assumption of the revolutionary he law was left where it stood in 1822, a prohibition till State debts, and this assumption was the result of a come price rose to seventy shillings sterling the quarter. promise, of which the condition was, that the seat of the

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