This is the act; and the bare statement of its enactments presents an arrogant and unconstitutional, and, as the event has proved, a most unwise, attempt to tie up the hands of Congress for nine years, upon the main subject for which the Federal Government was created, and up. on which constant attention and frequent action from Congress is required. I do not, said Mr. B., go into the full objections to this miscalled compromise act at present; another occasion, in the course of the debate, will be taken for that task. At present, I limit myself to a mere reference to the heads of my objections to it at the time it was passed; namely, that it was no compromise to which the States or the people were parties, but a mere arrangement between a couple of politicians, to get rid, for a little while, of a bone of contention between themselves, and to enable them to put their shoulders together against the administration; and, thus arranged, was carried through on a cry of civil war and disunion; that it was artfully contrived to keep up high duties for nine years, and then to let all down at once by a plunge, and so produce a general revulsion, and united effort at restoration to their former position, by all the parties interested in the high tariff; that, far from conforming to the will of the people, it was a frustration of their expressed will, made known in the issue of all the elections, and in the total defeat of the high-tariff candidates for the presidency and vice presidency; that it was eminently disadvantageous to the South and West, as it went to prevent further relief from duties till 1842, and then left Congress at full liberty, after that period, to raise the duties as high as ever; and, finally, that it was an arrogant, unconstitutional, unwise, and impotent attempt to limit, restrain, and nullify the action of Congress upon a subject on which they were bound by the constitution to act just so often as action was necessary. For these reasons, and many others, I opposed this act at the time it was passed; and declared then, as I declare now, that I should pay no more regard to it than to any other act of Congress; and that I should act upon the subject of duties whenever it seemed necessary, by looking to the constitution of the United States, and not to this little truce between a couple of antagonist politicians, for the source of my legislative powers.

The article of salt would fall, as would almost every valuable article in the bill, under the prohibitions of this act. By that act, Congress is doubly prohibited from legislating upon it until the advent of that great day for recovering our constitutional powers, which is designated as the 30th day of June, in the year 1842. The prohi. bition is double-first, as an article not paying an ad valorem, but a specific duty; and next, as paying a duty above 20 per cent. on the value. Under this act, then, our powers are gone, but under the constitution they are in full force; and, as that constitution does not warrant the levy of more money for the federal Treasury than the federal wants require, and we are now levying more than we want, I, for one, shall proceed to reduce the levy, and shall have recourse to the salt tax as the leading and most eminent article on which the reduction should fall. I put it at the head of the list of the articles for abolition of duty, both for the amount of the tax which it produces, and the nature of the article itself. The tax which it brings to the Treasury is about $650,000 per annum; the article upon which it is levied is one of most universal use and of most indispensable necessity. This tax is great in itself, amounting to near an average of 100 per cent. upon the mass of the salt imported; but it is only by looking into the detail of the tax, its amount upon different varieties of salt, its effect upon the trade and sale of the article, upon its importation and use, and the consequences upon the agriculture of the country, for want of adequate supplies of salt, that the weight of the tax and the disastrous effects of its imposition can be

[SENATE.

ascertained. To enable the Senate to judge of these ef fects and consequences, and to render my remarks more intelligible, I will read a table of the importation of salt for the year 1835-the last that has been made up-and which is known to be a fair index to the annual importations for many years past. With the number of bushels, and the name of the country from which the importations come, will be given the value of each parcel at the place it was obtained, and the original cost per bushel. Statement of the quantity of salt imported into the United States during the year 1835, with the value and cost thereof, per bushel, at the place from which it was imported.

Mr. B. would remark that, salt being brought in ballast, the greatest quantity came from England, where we had the largest trade; and that its importation, with a tax upon it, being merely incidental to trade, this greatest quantity came from the place where it cost most, and was of far inferior kind. The salt from England was nearly one half of the whole quantity imported, its cost was about sixteen cents a bushel, and its quality was so inferior that neither in the United States nor in Great Britain could it be used for curing provisions, fish, butter, or any thing that required long keeping, or exposure to southern heats. This was the salt commonly called Liverpool. It was made by artificial heat, and never was, and never can be made pure, as the mere agitation of the boiling prevents the separation of the bittern and other foreign and poisonous ingredients with which all salt water, or even mineral salt, is more or less impregnated. The other half of the imported salt costs far less than the English salt, and is infinitely superior to it; so far superior that the English salt will not even serve for a substitute in the important business of curing fish and flesh, for long keeping or southern exposure. This salt was made by the action of the sun in the latitudes approaching and under the tropics. We begin to obtain it in the West Indies, and in large quantity on Turk's Island, and get it from all the islands and coasts under the sun's track from the Gulf of Mexico to the Black sea. The Cape de Verd islands, the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts of Spain and Portugal,

the Mediterranean coast of France, the two coasts of Italy, the islands in the Mediterranean, the coasts of the Adriatic, the Archipelago, and up to the Black sea, all produce it and send it to us. The tab'e which has been read shows that the original cost of this salt-the purest and strongest in the world-is about nine or ten cents a bushel in the Gulf of Mexico; five, six, and seven cents on the coasts of France, Spain, and Portugal; three and four cents in Italy and the Adriatic; and less than three cents in Sicily. Yet all this salt bears one uniform duty; it was all twenty cents a bushel, and is now near ten cents a bushel; so that while the tax on the. English salt is a little upwards of fifty per cent. on the value, the same tax on all the other salt is from 100 to 200, and 300, and near 400 hundred per cent. The sun-made salt is chiefly used in the great West, in curing provisions; the Liverpool is chiefly used on the Atlantic coasts; and thus the people, in different sections of the Union, pay different degrees of tax upon the same articles; and that which costs least is taxed most. A tax ranging to some hundred per cent. is in itself an enormous tax; and thus the duty collected by the Federal Government from all the consumers of the sun-made salt is in itself excessive; amounting, in many instances, to double, treble, or even quadruple, the original cost of the article. This is an enormity of taxation which strikes the mind at the first blush; but it is only the beginning of the enormity, the extent of which is only discoverable in tracing its effects to all their diversified and injurious consequences. In the first place, it checks and prevents the importation of the salt. Coming as ballast, and not as an article of commerce on which profit is to be made, the shipper cannot bring it except he is supplied with money to pay the duty, or surrenders it into the hands of salt dealers, on landing, to go his security for the payment of the duty. Thus the importation of the article is itself checked; and this check operates with the greatest force in all cases where the original price of the salt was leas; and, therefore, where it operates most injuriously to the country.

In all such cases the tax operates as a prohibition to use salt as ballast, and checks its importation from all the places of its production nearest the sun's track, from the Gulf of Mexico to Constantinople. In the next place, the imposition of the tax throws the salt into the hands of an intermediate set of dealers in the seaports, who either advance the duty, or go security for it, and who thus become possessed of nearly all the salt which is imported. A few persons employed in this business engross the salt, and fix the price for all in the market, and fix it higher or lower, not according to the cost of the article, but according to the necessities of the country, and the quantity on hand, and the season of the year. The prices at which they fix it are known to all purchasers, and may be seen in all prices current. It is generally, in the case of alum salt, four, five, ten, or fifteen times as much as it cost. It is generally forty, or fifty, or sixty cents a bushel, and nearly the same price for all sorts, without any reference to the original cost, whether it cost three cents, or five cents, or ten cents, or fifteen cents, a bushel. About one uniform price is put on the whole, and the purchaser has to submit to the imposition. This results from the effect of the tax, throwing the article, which is nothing but ballast, into the hands of salt dealers. The importer does not bring more money than the salt is worth, to pay the duty; he does not come prepared to pay a heavy duty on his ballast; he has to depend upon raising the money for paying the duty after he arrives in the United States; and this throws him into the hands of the salt dealer, and subjects the country purchaser to all the fair charges attending this change of hands, and this establishment of an intermediate dealer, who must have his profits, and also to all the additional exactions which he may choose to make.

[FEB. 21, 1837.

This should not be. There should be no costs, nor charges, nor intermediate profits, on such an article as salt. It comes as ballast-as ballast it should be banded out-should be handed from the ship to the steamboat-should escape port charges and intermediate profits; and this would be the case if the duty was abolished. Thus the charges, costs, profits, and exactions, in consequence of the tax, are greater than the tax itself. But this is not all; a further injury, resulting from the tax, is yet to be inflicted upon the consumer. It is well known that the measured bushel of alum salt--and all sun-made salt is alum salt--it is well known that a bushel of this salt weighs about eighty-four pounds; yet the custom-house bushel goes by weight, and not by measure, and fifty-six pounds is there the bushel. Thus the consumer, in con. sequence of having the salt sent through the custom-house, is shifted from the measured to the weighed bushel, and loses twenty-eight pounds by the operation. But this is not his whole loss; the intermediate salt dealer deducts six pounds more, and gives fifty pounds for the bushel; and thus this taxed and custom-housed article, after paying some hundred per cent. to the Government, and several hundred per cent. more to the regraters, is worked into a loss of thirty-four pounds on every bushel. All these losses and impositions would vanish), if salt was freed from the necessity of passing the custom-houses; and to do that, it must be freed in toto from taxation. The slightest duty would operate nearly the whole mischief; for it would throw the article into the hands of regraters, and would substitute the weighed for the measured bushel.

Such are the direct injuries of the salt tax; a tax enormous in itself, disproportionate in its application to the same article in different parts of the Union, and bearing hardest upon that kind which is cheapest, best, and most indispensable. The levy to the Government is enor mous, $650,000 per annum upon an article only worth about $600,000; but what the Government receives is a trifle, compared to what is exacted by the regrater-what is lost in the difference between the weighed and the meas ured bushel-and the loss which the farmer sustains for want of adequate supplies of salt for his stock, and their food. Assuming the Government tax to be ten cents a bushel, the average cost of alum salt to be seven cents, and the regrater's price to be fifty cents, and it is clear that he receives upwards of three times as much as the Government does; and that the tribute to those regraters is near two millions of dollars per annum. Assuming, again, that thirty-four pounds in the bushel are lost to the consumer in the substitution of the weighed for the measur、 ed bushel, and here is another loss amounting to nearly three eighths of the value of the salt; that is to say, to about $250,000 on an importation of $650,000 worth.

These detailed views of the operation and effects of the salt duty, continued Mr. B., place the burdens of that tax in the most odious and revolting light; but the picture is not yet complete; two other features are to be introduced into it, each of which, separately, and still more, both put together, go far to double its enormity, and to carry the iniquity of such a tax up to the very verge of criminality and sinfulness. The first of these features is, in the loss which the farmers sustain for want of adequate supplies of salt for their stock; and the second, from the fact that the duty is a one-sided tax, being imposed only on some sections of the Union, and not at all upon another section of the Union.

A few details will verify these additional features. First, as to the loss which the country sustains for want of adequate supplies of salt. Every practical man knows that every description of stock requires salt; hogs, horses, cattle, sheep; and that all the prepared food of cattle requires it also-bay, fodder, clover, shucks, &c. In England it is ascertained, by experience, that sheep require, each, half a pound a week, which is twenty-eight

pounds, or half a custom-house bushel, per annum; cows require a bushel and a half per annum; young cattle a bushel; draught horses and draught cattle a bushel; colts and young cattle from three pecks to a bushel each per annum; and it was computed in England, before the abolition of the salt tax there, that the stock of the English farmers, for want of adequate supplies of salt, was injured to an annual amount far beyond the product of the tax. Dr. Young, before a committee of the British House of Commons, and upon oath, testified to his belief that the use of salt, free of tax, would bene. fit the agricultural interest, in the increased value of their stock alone, to the annual amount of three millions sterling; near fifteen millions of dollars. Such was the injury of the salt tax in England to the agricultural interest, in the single article of stock. What the injury might be to the agricultural interest in the United States, on the same article, on account of the stinted use of salt, occasioned by the tax, might be vaguely conceived from general observation and a few established facts. In the first place it was known to every body that stock in our country was stinted for salt; that neither hogs, horses, cattle, nor sheep, received any thing near the quantity found by experience to be necessary in England; and, as for their food, that little or no salt was put upon it in the United States; while, in England, ten or fifteen pounds of salt to the ton of hay, clover, &c., was used in curing it. Taking a single branch of the stock of the United States, that of sheep, and more decided evidence of the deplorable deficiency of salt can be produced. The sheep in the United States were computed by the wool growers, in 1832, in their petitions to Congress, at twenty millions; this number, at half a bushel each, would require about ten millions of bushels; now, the whole supply of salt in the United States, both home-made and imported, barely exceeds ten millions; so that, if the sheep received an adequate supply, there would not remain a pound for any other purpose. Of course, the sheep did not receive an adequate supply, nor perhaps the fourth part of what was necessary; and so of all other stock. To give an opinion of the total loss to the agricultural interest in the United States, for want of the free use of this article, would require the minute, comprehensive, sagacious, and peculiar turn of mind of Dr. Young; but it may be sufficient for the argument, and for all practical purposes, to assume that our loss, in proportion to the number of our stock, is greater than that of the English farmers, and amounts to fifteen or twenty times the value of the tax itself!

That the duty upon salt is a one-sided tax--a tax upon some sections of the Union, and not upon other parts-results from the fishing bounties and allowances, which are only applicable to the Northeastern States. These bounties and allowances are founded upon the salt tax, and proceed upon the assumption of reimbursing to the fishing interest the amount of the duty paid upon the salt which is put upon the fish which is exported from the United States. Upon this assumption, about six millions and a half of dollars have been drawn from the federal Treasury; and the payment is still going on at the rate of about $250,000 per annum. Our constitution declares, and, if it did not, the first principles of common justice would prescribe, that taxes and duties should be uniform and equal throughout the Union; but here is no uniformity, no equality. The whole tax that is assumed to be paid in one section of the Union, and far more than is actually paid, is refunded to that quarter; not a cent is refunded in the other quarters of the Union. Thus, what is a grievous tax in some sections of the Union, is no tax at all, but, on the contrary, a money-making busi ness, in another quarter. This is unjust; it is unconstitutional; it is odious and reprehensible. Formerly, at the suppression of the salt tax, in Mr. Jefferson's time,

[SENATE.

the fishing bounties and allowances were abolished; and in a bill which I myself introduced for the suppression of the tax some years ago, the abolition of these bounties and allowances was made part of its enactments; but opposition was made to it in the Senate; and in the partial reduction of the tax which took place in the bill from the House of Representatives, no corresponding diminution had been made in the fishing bounties and allowances. The present proposition to abolish the salt tax made no alteration in these bounties and allowances. They were permitted to stand, although the whole foundation might be removed on which they rested. Without admitting the equity of this forbearance, I am not disposed to depart from it. I shall make no motion to abolish these allowances; but I draw an argument from it, addressed both to our fellow-citizens of the Northeast and to those of the other sections of the Union; it is an argument addressed to the equity of one side to relinquish, and to the injured rights of the other to demand the repeal of a tax, which is a tax on some quarters of the Union, and not on another part; which is a burden so unequal, so unjust, so partial, so contrary to the declarations of the constitution, and so incompatible with the principles of taxation in a country of equal laws and equal rights.

I think reasons enough have been given for the aboli. tion of this tax; but another reason remains to be advanced. There is a compromise in this case also--a compact--a bargain--for this abolition; one well known to our legislative history, and as binding on the honor of the parties as any such compromise can ever be. The present duty was imposed on a pledge to be taken off in a certain contingency, which contingency has long since happened. The circumstances are these, and they will be recollected by some now present on this floor; and if their memories fail them, recorded evidence will supply the defect. The breaking out of the late war with Great Britain found this article free of tax; it had been made free in Mr. Jefferson's time, and remained so at the breaking out of the war. As a consequence of increased expenses, new taxes were resorted to for the support of the war; and it was proposed to revive the duty of twenty cents per bushel on imported salt. The imposition of the tax was vehemently resisted, but finally carried. The Cato of America, the patriarchal Mr. Macon, though in favor of the war, and of the measures to make it successful, resisted to the last the imposition of this tax, which was finally carried by the small majority of twenty-two votes. It was not until a year after the war was declared, and when the Treasury was driven to extremity for money, that a tax on this article of prime necessity could be imposed. The war was declared in July, 1812; the salt tax was imposed in July, 1813; and then as a war tax, as a temporary measure, to continue to the end of the war with Great Britain, "and for one year after its termination." So says the statute. The war terminated in February, 1815, and in February, 1816, the tax on salt should have ceased; but a heavy debt had been incurred by the war; it was necessary to keep up taxes to pay that debt; and the salt tax, among others, was continued for that purpose, upon the most solemn assurances of being abolished when the war debt was paid. This event has now occurred. The war debt is paid. The contingency for the abolition of the tax has again happened; and the fulfilment of the pledges so solemnly pledged is now as solemnly demanded.

These being the great and cogent reasons for abolishing the duty on this article of prime necessity, the question presents itself, what are the opposing reasons? what can be said against it? To this question we find it answered by the speakers on the other side, [Messrs. CALHOUN and PRESTON,] that the act of 1833 forbids it; and by another, [Mr. DAVIS,] that the fishing bounties