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

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      "2. Act of 1790 increases the bounty in lieu of drawback to ten cents a barrel on pickled fish and salted provisions, and ten cents a quintal on dried fish. The duty on salt being then raised to twelve cents a bushel.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      "5. Because it is the means of drawing an undue amount of money from the public treasury, under the idea of an equivalent for the drawback of duty on the salt used in the curing of fish. The amount of money actually drawn in that way is about four millions seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and is now going on at the rate of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars per annum, and constantly augmenting. That this amount is more than the legal idea recognizes, or contemplates, is proved in various ways. 1. By comparing the quantity of salt supposed to have been used, with the quantity of fish known to have been exported, within a given year. This test, for the year 1828, would exhibit about seventy millions of pounds weight of salt on about forty millions of pounds weight of fish. This would suppose about a pound and three quarters of salt upon each pound of fish. 2. By comparing the value of the СКАЧАТЬ