Thirty Years' View (Vol. I of 2). Benton Thomas Hart

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СКАЧАТЬ B. then argued, with great warmth, that the provision curers and exporters were entitled to the same bounties and allowances with the exporters of fish. The claims of each rested upon the same principle, and upon the principle of all drawbacks – that of a reimbursement of the duty which was paid on the imported salt when re-exported on 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 in the beginning. The first act of Congress, in the year 1789, which imposed a duty upon salt, allowed a bounty, in lieu of a drawback, on beef and pork exported, as well as fish. The bounty was the same in each case; it was five cents a quintal on dried fish, five cents a barrel on pickled fish, and five on beef and pork. As the duty on salt was increased, the bounties and allowances were increased also. Fish and salted beef and pork fared alike for the first twenty years.

      "They fared alike till the revival of the salt tax at the commencement of the late war. Then they parted company; bounties and allowances were continued to the fisheries, and dropped on beef and pork; and this has been the case ever since. The exporters of fish are now drawing at the rate of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars per annum, as a reimbursement for their salt tax; while exporters of provisions draw nothing. The aggregate of the fishing bounties and allowances, actually drawn from the treasury, exceeds five millions of dollars; while the exporters of provisions, who get nothing, would have been entitled to draw a greater sum; for the export in salted provisions exceeds the value of exported fish.

      "Mr. B. could not quit this part of his subject, without endeavoring to fix the attention of the Senate upon the provision trade of the West. He took this trade in its largest sense, as including the export trade of beef, pork, bacon, cheese, and butter, to foreign countries, especially the West Indies; the domestic trade to the Lower Mississippi and the Southern States; the neighborhood trade, as supplying the towns in the upper States, the miners in Missouri and the Upper Mississippi, the army and the navy; and the various professions, which, being otherwise employed, did not raise their own provisions. The amount of this trade, in this comprehensive view, was prodigious, and annually increasing, and involving in its current almost the entire population of the West, either as the growers and makers of the provisions, the curers, exporters, or consumers. The amount could scarcely be ascertained. What was exported from New Orleans was shown to be great; but it was only a fraction of the whole trade. He declared it to be entitled to the favorable consideration of Congress, and that the repeal of the salt duty was the greatest favor, if an act of justice ought to come under the name of favor, which could be rendered it, as the salt was necessary in growing the hogs and cattle, as well as in preparing the beef and pork for market. A reduction in the price of salt, next to a reduction in the price of land, was the greatest blessing which the federal government could now confer upon the West. Mr. B. referred to the example of England, who favored her provision curers, and permitted them to import alum salt free of duty, for the encouragement of the provision trade, even when her own salt manufacturers were producing an abundant and superfluous supply of common salt. He showed that she did more; that she extended the same relief and encouragement to the Irish; and he read from the British statute book an act of the British Parliament, passed in 1807, entitled 'An act to encourage the export of salted beef and pork from Ireland,' which allowed a bounty of ten pence sterling on every hundred weight of beef and pork so exported, in consideration of the duty paid on the salt which was used in the curing of it. He stated, that, at a later period, the duty had been entirely repealed, and the Irish, in common with other British subjects, allowed a free trade with all the world, in salt; and then demanded, in the most emphatic manner, if the people of the West could not obtain from the American Congress the justice which the oppressed Irish had procured from a British Parliament, composed of hereditary nobles, and filled with representatives of rotten boroughs, and slavish retainers of the king's ministers.

      "The 'American system' has taken the salt tax under its shelter and protection. The principles of that system, as I understand them, and practise upon them, are to tax, through the custom-house, the foreign rivals of our own essential productions, when, by that taxation, an adequate supply of the same article, as good and as cheap, can be made at home. These were the principles of the system (Mr. B. said) when he was initiated, and, if they had changed since, he had not changed with them; and he apprehended a promulgation of the change would produce a schism amongst its followers. Taking these to be the principles of the system, let the salt tax be brought to its test. In the first place, the domestic manufacture had enjoyed all possible protection. The duty was near three hundred per cent. on Liverpool salt, and four hundred upon alum salt; and to this must be added, so far as relates to all the interior manufactories, the protection arising from transportation, frequently equal to two or three hundred per cent. more. This great and excessive protection has been enjoyed, without interruption, for the last eighteen years, and partially for twenty years longer. This surely is time enough for the trial of a manufacture which requires but little skill or experience to carry it on. Now for the results. Have the domestic manufactories produced an adequate supply for the country? They have not; nor half enough. The production of the last year (1829) as shown in the returns to the Secretary of the Treasury, is about five millions of bushels; the importation of foreign salt, for the same period, as shown by the custom-house returns, is five million nine hundred and forty-five thousand five hundred and forty-seven bushels. This shows the consumption to be eleven millions of bushels, of which five are domestic. Here the failure in the essential particular of an adequate supply is more than one half. In the next place, how is it in point of price? Is the domestic article furnished as cheap as the foreign? Far from it, as already shown, and still further, as can be shown. The price of the domestic, along the coast of the Atlantic States, varies, at the works, from thirty-seven and a half to fifty cents; in the interior, the usual prices, at the works, are from thirty-three and a third cents to one dollar for the bushel of fifty pounds, which can nearly be put into a half bushel measure. The prices of the foreign salt, at the import cities, as shown in the custom-house returns for 1829, are, for the Liverpool blown, about fifteen cents for the bushel of fifty-six pounds; for Turk's Island and other West India salt, about nine cents; for St. Ubes and other Portugal salt, about eight cents; for Spanish salt, Bay of Biscay and Gibraltar, about seven cents; from the Island of Malta, six cents. Leaving out the Liverpool salt, which is made by boiling, and, therefore, contains slack and bittern, a septic ingredient, which promotes putrefaction, and renders that salt unfit for curing provisions, and which is not used in the West, and the average price of the strong, pure, alum salt, made by solar evaporation, in hot climates, is about eight cents to the bushel. Here, then, is another lamentable failure. Instead of being sold as cheap as the foreign, the domestic salt is from four to twelve times the price of alum salt. The last inquiry is as to the quality of the domestic article. Is it as good as the foreign? This is the most essential application of the test: and here again the failure is decisive. The domestic salt will not cure provisions for exportation (the little excepted which is made, in the Northeast, by solar evaporation), nor for consumption in the South, nor for long keeping at the army posts, nor for voyages with the navy. For all these purposes it is worthless, and useless, and the provisions which are put up in it are lost, or have to be repacked, at a great expense, in alum salt. This fact is well known throughout the West, where too many citizens have paid the penalty of trusting to domestic salt, to be duped or injured by it any longer.

      "And here he submitted to the Senate, that the American system, without a gross departure from its original principles, could not cover this duty any longer. It has had the full benefit of that system in high duties, imposed for a long time, on foreign salt; it had not produced an adequate supply for the country, nor half a supply; nor at as cheap a rate, by three hundred or one thousand per cent.; and what it did supply so far from being equal in quantity, could not even be used as a substitute for the great and important business of the provision trade. The amount of so much of that trade as went to foreign countries, Mr. B. showed to be sixty-six thousand barrels of beef, fifty-four thousand barrels of pork, two millions of pounds of bacon, two millions of pounds of butter, and one million of pounds of cheese; and he considered the supply for the army and navy, and for consumption in the South, to exceed the quantity exported.

      "It cannot be necessary here to dilate upon the uses of salt. But, in repealing that duty in England, it was thought worthy of notice that salt was necessary СКАЧАТЬ