many, really beneficial to none; and, fiscally, as well as politically, to the whole, most pernicious in its tendencies.

But when we turn a moment to the people as individuals, and without reference to their governments, whether State or Federal, the operation of this measure is oppressive in the extreme.

Beside its general tendency to relieve property or capital from taxation, as admitted by the senator before me (Mr. ARCHER), and thus to relieve the rich who own it, and who least need relief as a class,beside its temptation to make more expenditure and debt, which aid the same class, and to assist the foreign and domestic fundholder, who often bought in on speculation, and undeservedly has got a new security to the small extent of the amount paid over by us to the indebted States (and who are, in truth, the only persons aided by it, except jobbers in politics, as well as in stocks), the change which it forces in the tariff operates on a vast majority of the community with a most destructive partiality.

Thus, for a single example, which will come home in its details to the business and bosoms of all, in consequence of giving away, by this distribution, three millions of the proceeds of the public lands, it is proposed to reduce the duties on no necessaries of life, but, among other things, to raise them twenty per cent. on tea and coffee.

Now, sir, this last will yield, on our average consumption, only about two millions, and not, as misapprehended by many, nearly three millions. The duties on salt and molasses are now about one and a half millions, and in 1842, when at twenty per cent., will not much, if any, exceed one million. Hence it follows, that both salt and molasses might be made free, and coffee and tea left free, if we did not give away this three millions, and, in consequence of it, require the high tax of twenty per cent. to be retained on salt and molasses, and as high an one to be imposed anew on tea and coffee. Hence, sir, you see the first bitter fruits to the middling and poorer classes over the whole country of this boasted benevolent distribution, a tax on four of their greatest necessaries, quite three millions in amount, which might otherwise be entirely free.

But this is not the worst feature in the oppression thus caused to the farming interest, mechanics with small estates, and last, though not least, to the mere laboring classes of every kind of workmen. They, all together, constitute much of the bone and muscle of the community; and not only the physical power, but much of the sound intellect, the useful intelligence, the soul, the morals, the industry, and life-blood of society. It becomes, virtually, an abhorrent poll-tax on these classes for a large portion of this unnecessary burthen. This is not a popular tirade. To prove by facts, and to see ourselves how they are treated by this change in the system of collecting three millions by the tariff instead of the States,-a change so much lauded by the senator from Virginia,- let us examine a single computation. Take my own State, and which, in this respect, may be a fair sample,

not only for the interior of the east, but of the whole Union. The population of New Hampshire is a little less than 300,000, paying a State, county, pauper, and school tax, of not over $300,000, or a dollar per head. Of this, a small farmer, with a family of five children, making seven, the average number of a family, would not generally pay over five dollars; because our system, as that of other States, is to collect taxes chiefly from capital, valuable houses and lands, from stock in trade, money at interest, bank-shares, horses, &c. In this condition of things the distribution is made, and New Hampshire, with her present electoral vote, would receive $70,000. If this amount was then to be supplied, as it must be, by taxes, and those collected under our State system, rather than by the proposed resort to the tariff, the farmer and his family of seven would pay only $1.16 more. But, by an increased duty of twenty per cent. on tea and coffee alone, which equals only two millions, and hence would, or should, to be equal, impose on New Hampshire only two-thirds of the $70,000, he has to pay about $1.77 instead of $1.16, being an addition, or loss to each farmer, of more than fifty per cent. Thus, on a pound and a half of tea, the average consumption per head,-it is nine cents, which, for seven persons, is sixty-three cents. On six pounds of coffee per head, at two cents a pound, is twelve cents; and for seven persons, eighty-four. These alone make $1.47. Add to these the assessment above twenty per cent. for home valuation, the increased price for cash duties, and the profits of the intermediate dealers on those, and the duty, and they constitute, on the whole, a higher charge yearly to each farmer, by at least thirty cents more. This would make $1.77 paid to raise only two-thirds the amount, instead of $1.16, paid under a State tax, to raise the whole. Thus it is manifest that he pays in this way sixty-one cents more on these articles alone, or above fifty per cent. more, than he would under the State taxes; and, beside all this, is continued to be subjected to twenty per cent. taxes on all his salt and molasses, that might otherwise be free.

But take the class of laborers and artisans, who pay merely a poll tax, or that and a cow or small house and garden, which might make their whole State taxation, with a family of seven, not exceed a dollar or a dollar and a quarter. This class drink as much coffee and tea, usually, as the farmer himself, and their additional tax on them would be near $1.77, while the increase of the State tax, to raise a like sum, would not be over twenty-five or thirty cents; making a discrimination against that whole class of equal to six or seven hundred per cent., and making them use taxed salt and taxed molasses, daily and hourly taxed necessaries, instead of free ones.

These two great classes of people, thus oppressed by such a system, constitute more than one-half of the population of most of the States; and, while we both lower and raise the tariff, to benefit wealthy capitalists engaged in manufactures, not one to ten so numerous as agriculturists,—while we change the system of taxation avowedly to relieve

property and the rich, we do this at the expense of the more necessitous, and of the great masses. Thus we utterly neglect the greatest good of the greatest number. The extent of the inequality and outrage can hardly be comprehended, sir, till you consider, that if only half of the population of the United States consist of these classes, and if they suffer by this unjust discrimination only three-fourths of a dollar to each family of seven, it must be a loss yearly to them of nearly a million of dollars.

What a wretched cheat, as well as rank oppression, must the whole measure, then, prove to be in practice to the people at large! In this age of the schoolmaster abroad, and the great power of the press, do you expect them to be blind as well as deaf, and senseless to such injustice? No, sir. An act like this may be passed under impulses, --it may answer a temporary end, if adopted, to advance the interests of unscrupulous demagogues, and political jobbers as well as stockjobbers. But surely it will deprave, degrade, and defraud, all connected with the miserable delusion. Surely, the sound statesman, as well as the virtuous yeomanry of the country, will, when fully possessed of all the facts and principles adverse to its adoption, lament and deprecate a measure so pregnant with evil.

I may have failed to collect and present the most important of those facts and principles, so as now to produce such a conviction. Certainly I have not such confidence in my success as to anticipate a rejection of this bill, unless gentlemen opposite will condescend to examine further for themselves, and postpone a final decision till they can coolly and conscientiously revise previous impressions. If they, however, will neither delay the measure nor reject it, I am not without some faint hope that it may never become a law of the land. There is another high tribunal under the constitution whose ordeal it must pass. From the past scenes of this session, where the President, under a fearful responsibility, has exhibited the lofty moral sublimity of preferring duty to party, and has, by his example, recalled to memory some of the best days of either modern or ancient republics, I expect at least a full and fair consideration of the measure. I neither ask nor wish from the President any sacrifices of principle on this or any other measure. But I do trust that he will consider the substance more than the form of the present act; and if, as a senator, he voted against the similar bill of 1832, at a time when there was a surplus existing, or anticipated, rather than, as now, a deficiency and a resort to additional taxes rendered indispensable, and at a time when it was admitted by friends of the measure that a bill in this form, and under present circumstances, would be without constitutional sanction, he must now, as President, certainly hesitate, if looking to consistency, as well as constitutional duty.

He must see, also, great doubts in collecting money by one ratio under the constitution, and in distributing it by another, and in conforming neither to the idea of a debt or trust due to the States, nor to

any rule of specific appropriation of this money as a gift or grant, but rather make it to aid in the discharge or assumption of State debts, or some other objects which cannot, by possibility, come within any fair constitutional power over these delicate and highly responsible mat

ters.

But no more of this. If all here fails, there is still another power, - another tribunal, above either Senates or Presidents, which I trust in God will set everything right. This bill cannot go into actual operation till next year. In the mean time, and before the leprosy of corruption can penetrate and taint the body politic, the people may get light more full and unclouded. The blue sky of hope is gleaming out in various quarters. Let discussion and examination, reason and justice, a sense of equal rights among all the members of the Union and all classes of the community, be roused and electrify the whole. Then repeal will be invoked in a voice wide, deep, and irresistible. No difficulty in the way can arise, as to vested rights or violated compacts. The whole matter is public in its origin, public in its progress, public in its ends.

Let the great conservative power in our system, then, be honestly and faithfully appealed to, and a repeal will, in my apprehension, become as certain by the fiat of the people, as are the movements of that omnipotent Providence, which controls not only the planetary system, but all human designs.

NATIONAL FINANCES.*

ALL admit that this is an alarming exigency in our financial affairs. The bill on your table, as well as the proposed amendment to it, both look to the dire necessity of borrowing something, not only in a period of profound peace, but at a moment when our credit has suddenly become much depreciated; friends and foes must, therefore, be anxious to effect a loan on the best terms which are practicable. As a general rule, the loan should be small in amount as possible; and the best terms would certainly be the lowest rate of interest, and the shortest period, which are obtainable in so critical a position. We can hardly appreciate the change in that position, and its present deplorable char

* A speech on the Loan Bill; delivered in the United States Senate, April 9, 1842.

acter, unless we advert to our situation one short year ago, with no permanent debt of our own, with a small temporary one of only five or six millions, and that above or at par, with a reduced and reducing expenditure, with a revenue from lands and customs ample, under slight revisions in the latter, to meet such an expenditure, and extinguish the whole debt, and with a national credit untarnished, undepreciated, and unsuspected. If, more in sorrow than in anger or in party reproach, we contrast that lofty position with what now stares us in the face, a hideous mass of large permanent debt, and a still larger temporary one, greatly increased expenditures, depreciated stocks, and protest on protest for non-payment of ordinary demands, as well as temporary loans, our hearts must recoil at the sight. When we look further, and see the whole land revenue squandered, and an impossibility of getting onward in such a ruinous career without further disgrace, further acts of bankruptcy, or further loans at rank usury, it all admonishes us solemnly that something wrong must have produced such disasters, and that something new and efficient must be adopted to remove them. Let us examine the subject, then, in a manner which an emergency so calamitous demands, rising, for once, above party or the mere politics of the day, and forgetting everything but what is required of us as statesmen, patriots, and senators. I shall, therefore, forbear to criminate or recriminate; and, in such a condition of peril to the country and its high character, I will devote my whole efforts to discover the best mode of relief, through a loan, which appears to comport with public honor and public safety, and which, at the same time, bids fair to be crowned with success.

Hence, I am willing to overlook every consideration of form in this bill, and every subordinate objection, if only the main features of it can be made such as are most likely to insure a creditable escape from present ignominy. I say nothing, then, as to the extension of the time for a year or two within which the loan must be made, if made at all. Nor will I be captious concerning the amount which the executive is authorized to borrow, though in one view it is much too large, and in another it is not large enough, by several millions, to carry out the policy now in force. Nor will I dwell on the better reasons which exist for a monthly publication of what is done under this bill, as in the case of all our treasury note bills, rather than a report of it to Congress hereafter, which, of course, could call for it without this provision. Nor am I tenacious as to the form of advertising and of accepting offers, though, in some respects, exceptionable. Nor will I stop to expose the great danger of issuing certificates virtually to bearer, and also in sums as small as fifty dollars, or fifty cents, and thus open the door to infinite difficulties or frauds, and forgeries, in respect to the payment of interest, and create a paper circulation not redeemable at all for twenty years, and for discharging which not even the one dollar of specie to three of paper is required to be kept, which the original exchequer project provided for.