through five or six ports. These articles being of almost universal consumption, having a pretty uniform value, the duties levied on them being very generally distributed over the year and falling on the consumer in small amounts, altogether afford such a convenient and effective method of raising revenue, that government, in its present exigency, will not agitate their repeal. Besides, if government were to relinquish the fifty millions now derived from this source, it would necessitate the raising a like amount from some other source-say from the profits of mines or manufactures, and, therefore, the proprietors of these industries would have just fifty millions less to employ as a wages fund. Such a transfer of taxation from labor to capital would not materially help the laborer.

Carriages, carriage horses, servants, billiard tables, jewelry and plate are the objects of a good round taxation, because it falls principally upon the opulent, and if found burdensome these articles can be dispensed with. We are not certain, as in Great Britain, that a tax on windows above a certain number, and on houses over and above a certain rental, might be advantageously laid.

Of all articles, however, spirits, wine, beer and tobacco are legitimately the subjects of heavy taxation. They are emphatically luxuries. They contribute in no degree to the support of human life; their use, in excess, leads to a long train of woes, and the consumer, if he finds the tax burdensome, can abstain from their use. Government, in adjusting duties on this class of products, must legislate for revenue and not for moral reform,-for all history proves that government, by legislation, can not suppress intemperance. Pernicious as is the habit of using intoxicating liquors, exhaustive as it is of the earnings of the laborer, the ethical question must be referred to the reformer

the question of revenue to the legislator. These articles will bear taxation up to a point where illicit distillation or smuggling will not incur the risk of detection; but pass that point, and human ingenuity will devise means to render over-taxation impotent. The levying of our first whiskey tax was the result of a combination of piety, perfidy and plunder. The distiller had due notice that the tax was to come, and therefore ran his still night and day. The politician, who never before bought liquor except by the gallon, saw that if he could buy highwines without duty and sell them afterwards with a duty added, such duty would be the measure of his profits; and the preacher vainly imagined that an excessive duty would suppress tippling. The tax successively rose from fifty cents up to two dollars a gallon, and each successive impost was urged by the combined influence of the distiller, the speculator and the moral reformer. If the government had made these several imposts applicable to the stock on hand, in which there would have been no injustice, a most stupendous fraud would have been obviated; but, as it was, the legislation of the country was made use of to transfer millions of dollars into the pockets of the distillers and speculators, while government was deprived of all revenue, at a time when its credit was fluttering in the wind and gold bore a premium of two hundred per cent. Nor was the vision of the moral reformer fulfilled. It was found that men would continue to drink, and that the appetite could not be extinguished by legislation. But this was not all. Retaining the tax of two dollars—a tax vastly disproportioned to the cost of production - it was found too, as might be inferred, that illicit distilling, smuggling, and wholesale bribery and corruption of revenue officials ensued. Such a thorough demoralization of men in the public service was never witnessed. Government

held out the strongest incentives to fraud. All commercial history shows that excessive duties can not be collected. "They tempt," says Adam Smith, "persons to violate the laws of their country who are frequently incapable of violating those of natural justice, and who would have been, in every respect, excellent citizens, had not the laws of their country made that a crime which nature never meant to be so."

Still more emphatic upon this point is M'Culloch. "To create, by high duties, an overwhelming temptation to indulge in crime, and then to punish men for indulging in it, is a proceeding completely subversive of every principle. of justice." It enlists the sympathies of the people in behalf of the transgressor. They can not be brought to regard the violators of such laws as malefactors. Such punishments do not carry the sanction of public opinion. When the market price of whiskey was less than the duties, no honest distiller could afford to prosecute his business, and he was forced in self-defense to resort to every device to evade the duty.

Was it to be expected, too, that, with an ocean coast three thousand miles in extent, and intersected by numerous inlets, and with a lake frontier equally extended and lined with almost impenetrable forests, that smuggling could be suppressed? When the special commissioner proposed a reduction of imposts to a point which should render smuggling and illicit distilling unprofitable, the proposition encountered the fiercest opposition from the very class who were required to pay the exorbitant tax, and who, it was naturally supposed, would favor a reduction to the lowest amount. But the measure carried, and the result is what might have been foreseen. Government now receives a greater revenue under the low tax than under the high tax; smuggling and illicit distilling are suppressed, because they do not pay; and the revenue offi

cers are not debauched, because it is not for the interest of the legitimate distiller to buy them up. The commer

cial history of every European State should have served as an example for the guidance of our own legislators; and the future historian, in treating of these matters, must infer that they were either wilfully corrupt or wilfully shortsighted. Adopting either view, the result was the sickening, revolting sight of a set of harpies preying on the vitals of the nation.

Indirect taxes derived from imports have, among all commercial people, been regarded as less oppressive and less unpopular than direct taxes. They attach to so many articles that the purchaser does not pay all at once; and, besides, he lulls himself into the belief that he is paying simply the market value. He can, too, to some extent, avoid them by the exercise of frugality. He is not annoyed by the domiciliary visits of the tax-gatherer, and is not tempted to commit subornation of perjury. Direct taxes are a

different affair. Here is a demand of a specific sum, peremptory as the highwayman's, "Your money or your life." Free and enlightened Americans don't like to shell out in this way-to part with a specific sum without being assured of an equivalent. They squirm under such a demand, while they cheerfully submit to pay an unknown increment on nearly every article which they consume. The one is Ayer's sugarcoated pill, easily swallowed; the other, 8 nauseous compound at which the stomach revolts; but both are equally efficacious in purging the patient. The one is Mrs. Winslow's soothing syrup; the other a bolus of unadulterated ipecacuanha. Indirect taxes, then, levied on imports are the most feasible mode of raising revenue; but when they are so adjusted as to bolster up a particular industry and depress another, they become mischievous. Protection and rev

enue are as antagonistic as fire and water. Protection implies exclusion of foreign goods which compete with the home articles, and therefore a diminution of revenue. Free trade implies the admission of foreign goods, charged with duties which shall go to the treasury. Protection claims that these duties shall be applied as a bounty to the home manufacturer.

And here it may be well to advert to the bug-a-boo cry raised by the prohibitionists, that there is a party in this country who are in favor of abolishing all custom houses and custom house officers, and allowing unrestricted commercial freedom. This they would fain persuade the people is free-trade. Nothing can be more erroneous. The free-trader says to the government, "Collect whatever you require in the way of revenue, but not one cent for protection." "Free trade means trade freed, not from the necessary duties which are raised only for the purposes of revenue, but trade freed from all charges or duties which arise either from an ignorant jealousy of other countries, or from an equally foolish impression that it is our duty to foster unnatural productions in our own country, rather than receive them from other countries, whence, being produced under more favorable circumstances, they can be obtained in larger quantities, of better quality, and at a lower price."

The Morrill tariff, almost every one admits, was the work of empirics. For three sessions the committee of Ways and Means have attempted to frame a revenue system having in view some fixed principles, but the advocates of each special interest insisted upon additional protection carried to the verge of prohibition, and the result would have been to deprive the government of nearly all revenue from this source. Thus was presented a spectacle-using a simile of Sidney Smith's-not unlike that of twenty fettered men in a jail,

every one employed in loosening his own fetters with one hand, and riveting those of his neighbor with the other; or of the Exeter monkeys when fed, where each individual was observed to reach over and attempt to filch the contents of his neighbor's porringer.

So keen is the rage for the protection of special interests, that it has been demanded, as we are informed by the commissioner, on Bibles and ice! Bibles and ice!! Imagine the head of a Bible society appearing before the committee of Ways and Means and using the following argument: "We have founded an institution for the purpose of printing and distributing Bibles, not only among the benighted people of the West, but among the pagan nations of the world, and particularly the Hindoos and the inhabitants of the Fegee Islands. We have attempted their conversion by the employment of the best means in our power. Owing to the high price of labor, paper and printing in this country, and the high rates of transportation, as compared with Great Britain, we have not only been driven out of the markets of Hindostan and the Fegee Isles, but in our own country we are liable to be flooded with British Bibles. We, therefore, pray you to impose such a duty on British Bibles as shall enable us to enjoy the home market for propagating the Gospel."

The ice man varies the argument somewhat: "Whereas, Providence has given to Nova Scotia a hyperborean climate, and as a result ice is formed more readily and in thicker sheets than in New England; and, whereas, our vessels have been driven from the ocean, so that the Blue-Noses are enabled to undersell us in our own markets, therefore we pray, etc.," which means that Congress shall protect them against the providence of God.

The owner of a nickel mine in Pennsylvania-the only one wrought, we

States-re

believe, in the United proaches Congress that it does not lay almost a prohibitory duty on that article for his special benefit, and at the same time give him the monopoly of furnishing the material for the coinage of nickel cents.

The existing duty on pig iron is $9, gold-equivalent to $12, currency. The average cost of production is $26, while the selling price is from $37 to $42.

"Under these circumstances," says the commissioner, "the manufacturers of pig iron have, to the detriment of the rolling-mill interest, and to the expense of every consumer of iron from a rail to a plough-share, and from a boiler plate to a tenpenny nail, realized continued profits which have hardly any parallel in legitimate industry." The result of this discrimination, in favor of particular industries, is thus summed up by him: "A tariff based on small issues, rather than upon any great national principle; a tariff which is unjust and unequal; which needlessly enhances prices; which takes far more indirectly from the people than is received into the treasury; which renders an exchange of domestic for foreign commodities nearly impossible; which necessitates the continual exportation of obligations of national indebtedness and of the precious metals; and which, while professing to protect American industry, really, in many cases, discrim inates against it."

The people of the United States, from the inauguration of the present system

of national taxation in 1863, to the 30th of June 1868, have contributed to the treasury over eleven hundred millions of dollars. This vast sum has been collected without a riot, and hardly without a suit. It has been paid cheerfully, and is a conclusive evidence of the loyalty of our people and their attachment to our political institutions. Taxes will continue to be paid, with equal cheerfulness, if the people are satisfied that the burthen presses equally upon every interest; but if they become convinced that particular classes are growing rich on the misfortunes of the nation, it will arouse a feeling which can not be allayed until the whole fabric of protection is tumbled

over.

"It is difficult," says Hallam, "to name a limit beyond which taxes will not be borne without impatience, when they appear to be called for by necessity, and faithfully applied; nor is it impracticable for a skillful minister to deceive the people in both these respects. But the sting of taxation is wastefulness. What high-spirited man could see without indignation the earnings of his labor, yielded ungrudgingly to the public defence, becoming the spoil of parasites and speculators? It is this that mortifies the liberal hand of public spirit; and those statesmen who deem the security of government to depend, not on laws and armies, but on the moral sympathies and prejudices of the people, will even guard against the suspicion of prodigality."