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pects, but will not get, from the public | therefore to predict, that instead of thirtylands, and the amount wanted will be twenty millions. Thus he says:—

"The new tariff has now been in operation more than twelve months, and has greatly augmented the revenue and prosperity of the country. The net revenue from duties during the twelve months ending 1st December, 1847, under the new tariff, is $31,300,000, being $8,528,396 more than was received during the twelve months preceding, under the tariff of 1842. The net revenue of the first quarter of the first fiscal year, under the new tariff, was $11,106,257 41 cents, whilst, in the same quarter of the preceding year, under the tariff of 1842, the net revenue was only $6,153,826 58. If the revenue for the three remaining quarters should equal in the average the first, then the net revenue from duties during the fiscal year of the new tariff would be $44,425,029 64. If, however, the comparison is founded on all the quarterly returns for fortyeight years, (as far back as given quarterly in the treasury record,) and the same proportion for the several quarters applied to the first quarter of the year, it would make its net revenue, per table C, $40,388,045. Although the net revenue from duties already received, being $15,506,257 41, during the five months of this fiscal year, would seem to indicate its probable amount not less than $35,000,000, yet it is estimated at $31,000,000 for the fiscal year ending 30th June, 1848, and $32,000,000 for the succeeding year, in view of the possible effects of the revulsion in Great Britain. Although our prosperity is ascribed to the famine there, as though Providence had made the advance of one country depend upon the calamities of another, yet it is certain that our trade with Great Britain must be greater in a series of years, when prosperity would enable her to buy more from us (especially cotton) and at better prices, and sell us more in exchange, accompanied by an augmentation of revenue."

To realize the Secretary's anticipations. and estimates, our exports, during the present year, must come nearly up to two hundred millions of dollars. Suppose the average tariff on all our imports to be seventeen per centum, which is nearly two per cent. more than it was last year, and that our imports do not exceed our exports more than five per cent., which they probably will not do; then to raise a revenue of thirty-one millions of dollars, will require our exports to exceed one hundred and seventy millions of dollars, which every well-informed man knows will not be the case. We undertake

one millions of dollars from the customs, the treasury will not receive over twentysix, and probably less than twenty-five millions. Had the Secretary given us the imports and exports from the first of December, 1846, to the first of December, 1847, we could have predicted with more confidence. Supposing, then, that all the other estimates and calculations of the Secretary are correct, which they are far from being, and he will need a loan, the present year, of more than twenty-five millions of dollars. Now an addition of seven

teen per cent. to the present duties, properly distributed over the whole of our imports, would have produced just about that sum, and this would be a much more statesman-like measure, than a loan of twenty-five millions of dollars in the present, or any other condition of public tration of President Polk and Secretary credit likely to exist, under the adminis

Walker.

On the 14th of March, 1842, Sir R. Peel, then Premier of England, made the following exhibit to the House of Commons, as his estimate of the sources and amount of the British revenue, for the ending the 5th of April, 1843 :—

year

I estimate the revenues, says the Premier, at—
Customs,
£22,500,000
Excise,

Stamps,

13,450,000

7,000,000

Taxes, (land tax, we suppose,) 4,400,000
Post Office,
Crown Lands, -
Miscellanies,

500,000

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150,000

250,000

Total, £48,350,000

From the above table it will be perceived that more than one hundred millions of dollars, almost one half the enormous income of England, is derived from the customs. The amount of exports and imports, upon which that enormous sum was to be collected, are not given, and we have not at hand the means of ascertaining, but we may be sure, that the imports rather fell short than exceeded two hundred millions of dollars, and of course, the average duty on the whole import exceeded fifty per centum. This is the English doctrine of free trade! which Secretary Walker lauds so highly, re

duced to practice, for the British tariff has | oppressiveness of English taxation pronot since been so modified, as to reduce the amount of revenue from the customs a single million of dollars. The only material reduction in the British tariff, which our free trade party bruit so much, is the reduction of the duties on bread stuffs and provisions, which never amounted to a million of dollars a year.

ceeds from the excise, the land tax, the window tax, and the hearth tax-in short, from the taxes properly so called, and not from the imports, which, properly speaking, are not taxes. Except for the necessaries of life, no man pays an impost unless he pleases, and the necessaries of life are the subject of imposts to a very The population of the United States small extent in any country, because, as may be estimated at twenty millions, and a general rule, every nation produces its until the last year our exports of domestic own necessaries of life. A nation that products, in value, never exceeded about depended on other nations for any conone hundred millions of dollars, sometimes siderable portion of the necessaries of life, a little more, and sometimes a little less. would be in a very precarious condition, The population of the British isles may and could not long exist as a nation. be estimated at twenty-eight millions. Besides, the domestic product in every There can be no doubt, but what the nation always regulates the market for exports of the United States, in propor- the necessaries of life, such as bread and tion to their population, are, and always meat; and hence, the importer, or foreign have been, equal to the exports of Eng- producer, and not the consumer, must pay land in proportion to her population. As the impost on these articles. Therefore England manufactures nearly everything it is, that the market price of flour in for herself, it is natural to suppose that England regulates the price of flour in ours would be the largest, but suppose Ohio. If a duty of one dollar a barrel them to be equal; then if twenty millions is laid on flour in England, flour immediof people export one hundred millions of ately falls a dollar a barrel in Ohio. If produce, twenty-eight millions of people that duty is taken off, flour rises a dollar would export one hundred and forty mill- a barrel in Ohio; so that an English imions of produce; or if we take the last post on flour is, in reality, a tax on the year as the base of our calculations, and people of Ohio and others, who supply that twenty millions of people exported the English markets, and not on the peoone hundred and fifty millions of produce, ple of England. A duty of a dollar a then, by the same rule, twenty-eight mill- barrel, would not raise the price of flour ions of people would export two hundred to the consumer ten cents a barrel. The and ten millions of produce, so that the balance of the impost would have to be average of duties would still be about fifty paid by the producer. Hence, the hunper centum upon the whole imports of Eng-dred millions of dollars of revenue, which land. This exhibit of the English Premier shows what an enormous amount of revenue may be collected from imports without oppression or inconvenience to the people. Although England collects over one hundred millions of dollars per annum from her commerce, which does not exceed the commerce of the United States more than one-third, yet this enormous sum is annually paid by somebody, with little or no complaint by the people of England, except the trifling sum collected on bread stuffs. Take away the corn laws, which have not yielded a hundred thousand pounds sterling a year for the last twenty years, and there has been little or no complaint by the people of England, about the duties on English imports. The

England annually collects from her commerce, is not paid by the people of England, but by the people of the whole world with whom she deals. This is one of the main-springs of England's power. She levies tribute upon the whole world, but pays tribute to nobody. She merely humbugs the nations with the phantom of free trade.

So long as no duty is imposed on tea, coffee, and spices, an opulent farmer and a comfortable liver in our country will be under no necessity of consuming a single article in his family on which either a tax or a duty has been paid by anybody. How absurd then to talk about an impost being oppressive to the people. What we call the comforts and luxuries of life,

are the principal subjects of duties, and these are usually prized in proportion to their cost. The stronger an article smells of money, the more distinction its use will confer, and the more it will be coveted by those who have the means of paying for it. There is therefore no danger that high duties will ever prevent the importation of foreign products, to the full amount of our exports. The history of English commerce furnishes abundant proof of this fact. A duty of four or five hundred per centum does not prevent the consumption of tobacco in England, from which the government derives an enormous revenue. The greater portion of this revenue, it is true, is paid by the consumers, but up to some thirty or forty per cent. the producer would pay a part. So a duty by our government, of two or three hundred per cent. on wine and silks, would not prevent them from being imported and consumed in large quantities. Who ever heard of an article of luxury being so dear, that nobody would buy it? High duties are as much and even more complained of by producers, than by consumers; but if the duties are included in the price the consumer pays for the goods, the producer would have no cause to complain of the duty. If a duty of a dollar a barrel on flour raised the price of flour a dollar a barrel in the English market, what cause would the American producer have to complain of the duty? Every nation strives, by treaty or otherwise, to have its products subjected to as low a duty as possible by foreign governments; but if the consumer pays the duty, they need give themselves no trouble on that subject. If, then, England collects a revenue of over a hundred millions of dollars on her commerce, how easily could the United States collect half that sum on their commerce. But Mr. Secretary Walker will find that this cannot be done by reducing the duties on imports.

For what purpose the following fanfaronade was put into the Secretary's Report we are at a loss to conceive. Perhaps he thought he could darken counsel by a cloud of statistics and big figures, and thus conceal his blunders from the public eye; but if this was his object, he will find himself mistaken. His facts in the following quotation are all false, and his conclu

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"In my report of July 22, 1846, it was shown that the annual value of our products exceeds three thousand millions of dollars. Our population doubles once in every twenty-three years, and our products quadruple in the same period pounding itself quarter yearly at six per cent. -that being the time within which a sum cominterest will be quadrupled-as is sustained here by the actual results. Of this $3,000,000,000, only about $150,000,000 was ported abroad, leaving $2,850,000,000, used at home, of which at least $500,000,000 is annually interchanged between the several States of the Union. Under this system, the larger the area, and the greater the variety of climate, soil, and products, the more extensive is the commerce which must exist between the States, and the greater the value of the Union. We see then here, under the system of free trade among the States of the Union, an interchange of products of the annual value of at least $500,000,000 among our twenty-one millions of people; whilst our total exchanges, including imports and exports, with all the world besides, containing a population of a thousand millions, was last year $305,194,260, being an increase since the new tariff over the preceding year of $70,014,647. Yet the exchanges between our States, consisting of a population of twenty-one millions, being of the yearly value of $500,000,000 exchanged, make such exchange in our own country equal to $23 81 per individual annually of our own products, and reduces the exchange of our own and foreign products, (our imports and exports,) considered as $300,000,000 with all the rest of the world, to the annual value of thirty cents to each individual. That is, one person of the Union receives and exchanges annually of our own products as much as seventy-nine persons of other countries. Were this exchange with foreign countries extended to ninety cents each, it would bring our imports and exports up to $900,000,000 per annum, and our annual revenue from duties to a sum exceeding $90,000,000. An addition of

thirty cents each to the consumption of our products exchanged from State to State by our own people, would furnish an increased market of the value only of $6,300,000; whereas an increase of thirty cents each, by a system of liberal exchanges with the people of all the world, would give us a market for an additional value of $300,000,000 per annum of

our exports. Such an addition cannot occur by refusing to receive in exchange the products of other nations, and demanding the $300,000,000 per annum in specie, which could never

be supplied. But, by receiving foreign products at low duties in exchange for our exports, such an augmentation might take place. The only obstacle to such exchanges are the duties and the freights. But the freight from

New Orleans to Boston differs but little from

that between Liverpool and Boston; and the freight from many points in the interior is greater than from England to the United States. Thus the average freight from the Ohio river to Baltimore is greater than from the latter place to Liverpool; yet the annual exchanges of products between the Ohio and Baltimore exceed by many millions that between Baltimore and Liverpool. The Canadas and adjacent provinces upon our borders, with a population less than two millions, exchange imports and exports with us less in amouut than the State of Connecticut, with a population of 300,000; showing that, if these provinces were united with us by free trade, our annual exchanges with them would rise to $40,000,000. It is not the freight, then, that creates the chief obstacle to interchanges of products between ourselves and foreign countries, but the duties. When we reflect, also, that exchange of products depends chiefly upon diversity-which is greater between our own country and the rest of the world, than between the different States of the Union-under a system of reciprocal free trade with all the world, the augmentation arising from greater diversity of products would equal the diminution caused by freight. Thus, the Southern States exchange no cotton with each other, nor the Western States flour, nor the manufacturing States like fabrics. Diversity of products is essential to exchanges; and if England and America were united by absolute free trade, the reciprocal exchanges between them would soon far exceed the whole foreign commerce of both; and with reciprocal free trade with all nations, our own country, with its pre-eminent advantages, would measure its annual trade in imports and exports by thousands of millions of dollars."

This learned Report, in which the Secretary says he has shown that the annual amount of our products exceeds three thousand millions of dollars, we have never seen, and we are therefore unacquainted with the process of reasoning by which he thinks he has shown that magnificent fact. We suppose, however, that he has made use of the statistical tables made out under the direction and superintendence of the Commissioner of Patents. But we care not for his statistics or his estimates. We know, and every man of common sense who will reflect a moment upon the subject, may know, that they are false to an enormous extent. The pro

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ducts of last year, the largest ever made in the United States, did not exceed, and

probably fell short of fifteen hundred millions of dollars in value.

It is a well established principle of political economy, that the consumption of a nation must, and always will, about equal its production. If then three thousand millions were produced in a year, three thousand millions must, in some form or other, be consumed in a year, or it would not answer the purpose for which it was produced. Now does any man in his senses believe, that this nation ever consumed, in one year, products of the value of three thousand millions of dollars? Suppose the people of the United States to be twenty millions, and the average consumption of products per capita would be one hundred and fifty dollars in value. Now can any man who has any knowledge of the daily fare of the great mass of our population, believe, that men, women, children and slaves consume upon an average products of the value of one hundred and fifty dollars per annum? The thing is wholly incredible. One hundred and fifty dollars would enable each individual to pay two dollars a week for his board, and have fifty dollars a year wherewith to clothe himself. The people of the United States would be much indebted to Mr. Secretary Walker, if he would make good his assertion with regard to their wealth. The great mass of our population do not consume food of the value of thirty dollars a head per year, and although a great many (yet a small number in comparison to the whole) consume ten times that amount, yet if we set down sixty dollars a head as the amount consumed by each individual, it will probably be a liberal allowance, which would make the annual consumption twelve hundred millions for twenty millions of people ; and this is probably the full amount of our annual production.

There is another process of reasoning which will conduct us to about the same conclusion. Exclude women and children, and those classes who do not labor, and it will leave about one-fourth of the population for productive laborers. In a population then of twenty millions there will be five millions of productive laborers. Now these laborers must average six hundred dollars each in order to make an aggre

gate of three thousand millions. But every man who knows anything about labor, knows that such a supposition is utterly absurd. If we suppose each laborer to produce two hundred and fifty dollars a year, it will be a liberal allowance. This would give an annual product of twelve hundred millions. In the division of this product between labor and capital, we should probably be required to give to labor two-thirds, equal to eight hundred millions, and to capital one-third, equal to four hundred milllons. As women and children engage in some labor, it may be thought that our estimate of the number of laborers is too small; but there are those who consider the number of voters in a State where suffrage is universal, a fair measure of the number of productive laborers. If so, then our estimate is too large. But if we have under-estimated the number of productive laborers, we have also over-estimated the product of each laborer, as every man knows who has been either in the habit of laboring himself or employing others to labor for him.

dred millions are exchanged annually among the States, equal to twenty-three dollars and eighty-one cents per head of our whole population, and this, we are told, is in consequence of free trade among the States! "If our foreign commerce were increased to ninety cents per head for the whole world, (estimating the population of the world at a thousand millions,) it would give us an annual revenue of at least ninety millions of dollars." Surely, Mr. Secretary, were the sky to fall we should catch larks. "An addition of thirty cents for each individual to the consumption of our products exchanged from State to State, by our own people, would furnish an increased market of the value of only six and threetenths millions of dollars, whereas an increase of thirty cents each by a system of liberal exchanges with the people of all the world, would give us a market for an additional value of three hundred millions of dollars per annum of our exports." Very true, Mr. Secretary; but should we have the three hundred millions to exchange? The proper way to cook your hare, we are told, is first to catch him. But the Secretary tells us, that, "by receiving foreign products at low duties, in exchange for our products, such an augmentation might take place!" Very like a whale! The only obstacles, says the Secretary, are the duties and the freights. We opine, on the contrary, that our laborers would find other obstacles to an increased production of three hundred million dollars worth of products. "The Canadas and adjacent provinces upon our borders, with a population of near two millions, exchange imports and exports with us, less in amount than the State of Connecticut, with a population of three hundred thousand, showing that if these provinces were united with us by free trade, our annual exchanges with them would rise to forty millions of dollars." Surely, Mr. Secretary, you don't say this in sober earnestness! The Secretary winds

But extravagant and absurd as the Secretary's facts are, his reasoning upon those facts is, if possible, still more extravagant and absurd. Our population, he tells us, doubles every twenty-three years, and our products quadruple in the same time. And by what process of reasoning, gentle reader, do you suppose he arrives at such a sage conclusion? Why, forsooth, the Secretary says, that " any sum compounding itself quarter yearly at six per cent. interest, will be quadrupled in that time." Now if there be the slightest connection between his premise and his conclusion, we are not able to perceive it. Can it be possible that the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States believes that our productions were four times as great in 1847 as they were in 1824, and that they will be four times as great in 1870 as they were in 1847? It is to be feared that the statistics of the learned Secretary have addled his brain, and confounded his pow-up his fanfaronade with the following ers of ratiocination.

flourish: "If England and America were Of this three thousand millions of pro- united by an absolute free trade, the recipducts, only one hundred and fifty millions rocal exchanges between them would soon are exchanged with foreign nations, equal far exceed the whole foreign commerce of to only fifteen cents a head on the whole both; and with reciprocal free trade with all population of the world. The balance is nations, our own country, with its pre-emused at home. Of this balance five hun-inent advantages, would measure its annual

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