Again, the manufacture of salt in this country is far from being in its infancy, so as to require as large a duty as once might have been necessary, if ever necessary. Most of this manufacture—all of it in the interioris beyond the power of tariffs or monopolies. Its foundations are not laid in twenty per cent. duties or tariffs of any kind, but are laid deep as those of the Alleghanies themselves. They are laid by God and nature, in the distance of the manufacture from the seaboard, the great expense in the transportation of so heavy an article, and the small cost of its production. These constitute an unalterable, an eternal protection, and one which a duty of even two hundred per cent. cannot affect beyond a distance of thirty or forty miles, as it will not pay for its mere transportation beyond that extent,-over the dividing line of country, where the domestic and the imported salt can now be afforded at equal prices. The interior manufacturers, and the prices of their salt, except on that line, and to that extent, will remain as unaffected by this bill as they would be by a ukase in Russia. Those manufacturers, if they ask or need a protecting duty, will still have left a protection of one hundred per cent., which is treble that for their iron. or wool, and with which, I am conscious, from their intelligence and magnanimity, all of them must remain fully satisfied. The manufacturers also on the sea-board will still enjoy an equal protecting duty of one hundred per cent. They have had thirteen years to establish themselves under a duty still larger; and if their works cannot now be continued to advantage, under a treble protection to what most other manufacturers enjoy, it will not be difficult to decide whether any fault should be imputed to Congress. It would only show that the finger of nature pointed out to them, as it has to the people of the west, from what quarter they should seek their great supplies of this article. They should seek it where made by the influence of the sun on the ocean that laves their shores, without so much expense or aid of art. Of the extent of the manufacture on the whole sea-board I have no means of judging, except from the duties, and from observation in my own State: and on those I did suppose, at the last session, that the manufacture was of such a character as to have diminished even under a duty of two hundred per cent. If, as a memorial read yesterday suggests, it has rapidly increased and become extensively established, then the legitimate inference for us is that it can now probably go on with a less duty. And if the manufacture existed before the last war, when no duty whatever favored it, and when the encouragement by the State in not taxing it could not exceed one or two cents a bushel (and, that it did so exist, they themselves state), then also would it seem they might now go on with a duty of ten cents per bushel. Their existence before the last war, but not their great utility during the war,a point about which the senator from Maine spoke so strongly, was evinced in a striking manner by the recorded fact, that those establishments, being necessarily planted so near the seashore, were often battered down, and laid under contribution at pleas

ure, by the enemy. On the other hand, if they have declined since the war, it shows that the manufacture on the sea-board is one which no reasonable encouragement can there render flourishing; because the article is obtained so cheap at the salt islands and elsewhere, and can be so cheaply transported by water to the Atlantic shore. That it had declined I had reason to believe, because every old establishment in my own State had become abandoned; and because, notwithstanding the increased manufacture of salt in the interior, the use of imported salt in the country had increased, since 1807, nearly a million of bushels. This, it was supposed, could not have been the fact, if the manufacture of salt on the sea-board had also increased, or even remained stationary. But, be the manufacture on the sea-board prosperous or otherwise, the present bill will not, from a cause still different, be likely at present, if ever, to affect it essentially.

The northern West India vessels, which formerly loaded home with salt, mostly from the British islands, are now, by our difficulties concerning the colonial trade, driven entirely from that market; and the article must therefore, to an extent of nearly one-half our whole importation, be obtained more circuitously, and at an expense somewhat increased, though probably not so much as the proposed reduction of the duty. One other circumstance under this head. In speaking of the encouragement of manufactures by any duty, it is not to be forgotten that the present disproportionate duty on salt is a positive injury to many other useful manufactures in which salt is an ingredient. As an instance, I would mention the manufacture of the acid so largely employed in bleaching cottons and linens. Although this last manufacture may appear of diminished consequence in the eyes of those who have not witnessed the great establishments at the north for spinning and weaving cotton, yet of so much importance was it deemed in England, that for twenty years before the late repeal of their excise, the duty on salt used in the manufacture of that acid was greatly lowered, if not totally remitted.

So far, likewise, as the reduction of the duty would increase the consumption of salt, and thus give employment to more tonnage in its transportation, as we have before seen is highly probable, it would increase that most essential and much overlooked manufacture of vessels, a manufacture, whether in a sectional or national view, of no trifling magnitude, and which, by its iron, canvas, and cordage, is also interwoven with many of our most valuable establishments. I believe that full eight-tenths of the freighting vessels from New Hampshire load homeward, more or less, with salt.

One or two collateral considerations have been so connected with this bill as to require some answer. It was urged at the last session, and has now been reürged by the senator from Maine, that the reduction of the duty on salt would not lessen its price to the consumer. This must mean, all other circumstances affecting the prices remaining equal or unchanged. Two replies can be made to this conjecture,

either of which might suffice. The first is, that if it will not lessen the price to the consumer, then the duty becomes a tax exclusively on the importer, and is thus partial, invidious, and oppressive to him. The second is, that if it will not lessen the price, and, in consequence of that fact, is not thus partial against any class deserving our protection, we might and ought to increase the duty still further, and might safely increase it to forty or eighty cents, or even eight hundred cents, on the bushel, and thus increase our revenue, without wrong to anybody, and with great benefit to the treasury. Because, if a reduction will not affect the price, neither would an augmentation; and in this way the soundness of the gentleman's reasoning is fairly tested. We might thus easily restore the blessings of the gabelle on salt in France, or of the late excise in England; and do it, too, on that reasoning, without injury or cause of complaint to any class of society. No. The whole argument is founded in misapprehension, and in a want of proper discrimination between the effect of a large and small duty on an article of small value. It arises from not discriminating between the effect of any duty on the price of an article, when the duty is equal to the original cost, or double that cost, and when it amounts to only a small fraction of that cost.

The duty on salt is not merely a twentieth or thirtieth of the whole price of it on the sea-board, as is the duty on many other articles, and, therefore, but slightly affecting their whole price; but it constitutes two-thirds of the whole price. This causes the distinction. Look also at real life, a moment. It must be idle to suppose that the salt used in the fisheries, and in common purposes, and which is chiefly bought of the importer himself, and of the merchant purchasing directly from the importer, would not vary in price, when the whole actual cost per bushel to the importer was only ten or twelve cents, instead of thirty or forty cents; and that removing the duty, and thus lessening the cost to him one-half or two-thirds, would not lessen the price he would be disposed to ask, or others would be willing to give. If any attempt was made to keep up the price, under such circumstances, all other things being equal, how soon would the eagle eye of enterprise and commercial competition watch to increase the importation of salt, so as to bring the market price to its just level! Again: if the repeal would not affect the price, what becomes of the gentleman's argument, that the manufactories must be injured or destroyed by a reduction of the duty? For, if the price remains the same, their business will remain as profitable as before. The whole conjecture, however, is erroneous, and, if pushed through, would forever prevent any reduction in any duty whatever. Indeed, it is less applicable to the case of salt than to any other duty in the whole tariff, as the duty on that article constitutes a larger proportion of its whole price, in the hands of the importer, than the duty on any other article within my recollection.

I cannot consent to detain the Senate much longer, and have

omitted much illustration on some points, which other gentlemen can better supply. I should now close, without any further reference whatever to the influence of this bill on the fisheries, had not the topic been so frequently and so elaborately pressed by others upon our consideration, as to require one or two passing remarks.

In the first place, the bill says nothing, and meditates nothing, about the fisheries, except by reducing the duty to benefit them, in common with other consumers of imported salt.

In the next place, none of the three committees by whom this bill has been recommended have ever uttered a syllable, or expressed a wish, to affect the fisheries by it unfavorably.

Again: if frauds have been perpetrated in the fisheries, as represented by the senator from Maine, and also by some of my constituents, I have never named them as a reason for lessening the bounty; but trust, with him, they could be prevented by different statutory regulations on licenses, and other subjects connected with that branch of business. Nor is the present bill the least obstacle, as he supposed, to a continuance of the present allowance to the fisheries. This bill does not repeal the whole of the present duty, as the argument would seem to imply, and therefore leave no ground for any allowance in the character of a drawback; but the bounty or allowance could as well be predicted on the residue of the duty as upon the whole of it. This allowance is not pretended by him to be limited to the exact amount of the duty on the salt consumed; else the repeal, whether total or partial, of the duty and of the allowance together, pari passu, could work no injury to the fisheries, as they would then have remitted to them, in taking off the duty on salt, the precise sum they now receive as a bounty. But the allowance is something more than the mere duty; it is intended, and properly so, as in some degree an encouragement and protection to an employment so profitable to the nation, and so indispensable to its supply of seamen, both in peace and war. It rests on broader and more national principles than driving a hard bargain with the laborious fisherman about the mere drawback of a duty of twenty cents per bushel on salt. It rests on such liberal and statesman-like views as are disclosed in Mr. Jefferson's Report on the Fisheries, in 1794. It rests on facts now existing, independent of any changes in the tariff, though first recognized in the act imposing a duty on salt, and which act will still remain. in full force as to a duty of ten cents per bushel, and as to the present allowance. It rests on considerations like these: that, even with all the present allowance, our fishermen pursue their hardy and perilous employment under a direct bounty of full a half-dollar less per ton than the British fishermen; under the inconveniences of going to a greater distance to cure their fish; under a smaller protecting duty at home, against foreign fish; under the disadvantages that British fishermen pay no duty whatever on their salt; and hence, from all these causes, ours manifestly cannot compete at all, with less encourage

ment, or, with less, continue to furnish our population with their cheap and healthy articles of food, as well as profitable products for exportation. Withdraw the present allowance, and you cut off, at one blow, most of our annual exports of fish and oil, amounting, after all the domestic consumption of those articles, even to a million and a half of dollars. I say most of them; for fish and fish oil, excluding whale oil, constitute above two-thirds of all our annual exports from the sea. In 1825, fish alone amounted to $1,078,773. Nor can the country ever establish so good a nursery for its navy as by encouraging and inuring some of its citizens in this way, in their youth, to ocean scenes and ocean dangers,-to cast the line, and throw the harpoon, under every latitude, and amid every peril. The prompt and fearless patriotism of this class of men, during the late war, as well as during our Revolution, furnished an ample return for every arrearage of favor from the government. They will always richly repay any continuance of favor. Nobody who knows their character as I do will be unwilling to give his pledge, that, in any future hour of national trial, they will again evince the same chivalrous devotion to their country, and be ready, at all times, to pour out their blood, like water, in defence of its glory and its rights.*

RELIEF OF THE SURVIVING OFFICERS OF THE REV

OLUTION.†

IT has become my duty, said Mr. Woodbury, as chairman of the committee who reported this bill, to explain the origin and character of it. I regret that this duty has not devolved upon some abler representative of the interests of the petitioners; but I regret it the less, as my colleagues on the committee possess every quality, of both the head and heart, to advance those interests, and will, no doubt, hereafter be seconded by an indulgent attention on the part of the Senate.

Who, then, sir, are the venerable men that knock at your door? and for what do they ask? They are not suppliants for mere favor or charity, though we all know that nothing but the proud spirit which helped to sustain them through the distresses of our Revolution has withheld most of them from reliance for daily bread on the alms provided by the present pension act. No, sir! they come as peti

The duty was reduced.

† A speech delivered in the Senate of the United States, in 1828. There is another speech on the same subject, but it is not embraced in this volume.