tection could only be produced by perfect freedom, therefore the want of protection was incompatible with revenue. This is one of those instances where extremes meet. It is, undoubtedly, true that as you approximate closely towards duties of prohibition, you diminish the revenue from the article on which those duties are laid. But it is by no means sure, that a moderately high duty which will decrease importations to a very considerable extent, may not yield as large a revenue as a duty so low as not to diminish them at all. Take an easy illustration. Four million dollars' worth of cottons or wollens imported at a five per cent. duty, will yield a revenue of $200,000. But raise the duty to twenty per cent., and suppose that by so doing you exclude three fourths of the importation, the one million which is left will yield the same amount, the increase of the duty making up for the diminution of the imports.

The honorable gentleman, however, has in some degree explained himself on this point, in a reply to a remark of my colleague, (Mr. Hudson,) and he must pardon me for saying, that he seems to have explained away the whole force of his paradox. I understood him to admit, that protecting duties did not immediately destroy revenue; that, on the contrary, they might increase it for one, two, three, or any number of years; and that it was only when they had enabled the domestic manufacturer or producer to supply the entire demand of the country, that they would put an end to it entirely. It was thus only an ultimate tendency of protecting duties to destroy revenue, and not their immediate result. Well, now, Sir, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Let the gentleman join with us in establishing a moderate system of protecting duties, graduated upon a revenue standard; and whenever his theory is verified, and protection and revenue have been proved to be no longer compatible, it will be early enough to assign this as a reason for supplying the necessities of the treasury in some other way.

But I have alluded to this point principally for the sake of saying, that the gentleman has, in my judgment, placed an utterly unwarrantable construction on the phrase, now so much in vogue, that duties should be laid primarily for the purposes of revenue, and that protection is only to be incidental to that object. His

construction of this doctrine appears to be, that we are to apply the principle to each individual article of import,- selecting those articles, in the first place, on which to lay a duty, and laying upon each of them precisely that rate of duty, which will yield the largest possible amount of revenue. This is what he seems to understand by looking primarily to revenue. And it is easy to perceive that the protection incidental to such a system of imposts might be very inconsiderable. Such a system would find its legitimate commencement in the imposition of the highest duties on the most indispensable necessaries of life, and more particularly on such of them as we were least able to produce or manufacture for ourselves; and would resort to a duty upon luxuries, and upon articles entering into competition with our own labor, only when all other sources of additional revenue were exhausted.

But in no such sense as this, I need hardly say, Sir, was the doctrine, that revenue was to be the primary object, and protec tion only incidental, ever asserted or understood by the friends. of a discriminating tariff. The whole sum and substance of this doctrine, as avowed by them, is, that no more duties are to be collected in the aggregate than are necessary for purposes of revenue; that we are not to accumulate a surplus in the Treasury by laying high duties merely for protection; that, in a word, nó more moneys are to be levied upon the people than are wanted for the support of the government. But having ascertained how much is wanted, having fixed the aggregate amount of revenue which it is necessary to raise, we contend for the right and for the obligation to raise it by such duties upon such articles as the great agricultural, manufacturing, or commercial interests of the country may render expedient. This was the doctrine so clearly and emphatically expressed by Mr. Webster, in the resolutions which he laid on the table of the Senate at the time of the adoption of the compromise act, and in explana tion of the views with which he opposed that act. This is what I understand to be the doctrine of the present Secretary of the Treasury, where he says, "it is fully acknowledged that all duties should be laid with primary reference to revenue; and it is admitted, without hesitation or reserve, that no more money

should be raised, under any pretence whatever, than such an amount as is necessary for an economical administration of the government." And this, too, is the only interpretation I can put upon these paragraphs of the President's message, "In imposing duties, however, for the purposes of revenue, a right to discriminate as to the articles on which the duty shall be laid, as well as the amount, necessarily and most properly exists."— "So, also, the government may be justified in so discriminating by reference to other considerations of domestic policy connected with our manufactures. So long as the duties shall be laid with distinct reference to the wants of the Treasury, no well-founded objection can exist against them." Sir, I do not presume that the opinion of the President, whatever it may be, is to have any very controlling influence in this House. But if this language in his message was not used to mislead those to whom it was addressed, was not designed to give a promise to the ear to be broken to the hope, (and no one has ventured to intimate such an idea,) it must have been intended to express an opinion in favor of discrimination, within the standard of revenue, for the purposes of protection.

The honorable gentleman from Virginia, indeed, (Mr. Jones,) informed us many days ago, that the President's whole life precluded such a construction; and the remark has been indorsed in a quarter from which an indorsement is supposed to come with something more than common authority, the columns of the Madisonian. But I must insist that there is at least one passage in his life, and that of very recent occurrence, which the gentleman from Virginia could not have remembered, or could not have intended to include.

During the late political campaign, Mr. Tyler was interrogated on this question of a tariff by Mr. William Robinson, Jr., of Pittsburg; and here is an extract from his reply:

"My opinions were fully expressed at St. Clairsville, and at Steubenville. At both places, in regard to the question, what are your opinions as to the tariff? I answered that I was in favor of sustaining the compromise bill. That it contained the principle of retroaction the moment the duty attained its minimum, which forced up the protec tion, eo instanti, to what was equivalent to forty per cent. That the change which it effected in the plan of valuation and the mode of payment, was fully equal, in my view, to twenty-five or twenty per cent.; and that, with a cessation of the war upon the

currency, which had paralyzed the industry of the country, I was sanguine in the hope and the belief that prosperity would be speedily restored."

Mr. Tyler was thus in favor of the compromise act, because it contained a retroactive principle which forced up the protection to what was equivalent to forty per cent. How, then, can any one say that his whole life has proved him to be an enemy to protection? And let me add here, that, with this understanding of the compromise act, I am in favor of sustaining it also; and if its friends will unite with us in so adjusting the cash duty and home valuation principles, to which Mr. Tyler referred, as to make them equivalent to forty per cent., nay, or even to a fairly imposed and fully collected thirty per cent. ad valorem, — I will venture to say, that it will soon cease to have any opponents. And now, Mr. Speaker, let me say a few words in conclusion of the whole matter, and with more immediate reference to the precise question upon which we are about to divide. The compromise act, as it is called, is about reaching its final consummation. Its ten years of transition state are about to expire. Its proposed experiment of a uniform twenty per cent. ad valorem system is about to commence. Sir, in the judgment of a large portion of the people of this country, that experiment is destined to prove a failure. Its failure, indeed, is regarded by many, as a foregone conclusion. They think there is evidence enough on that point already. In their judgment, it will inevitably fail, in the first place, to produce revenue enough to meet the economical wants of the government, using the word economy, not as some gentlemen in the course of this debate have used it, with mere reference to dollars and cents, but with relation to the honor, the dignity, the common defence and general welfare of the country. In their judgment, too, it will no less signally fail in exerting those favorable influences on all the great interests of American industry-commercial and agricultural, as well as manufacturing which may be justly expected from the operation of a permanent revenue policy. They believe that the payment of duties in cash which it prescribes, will be a serious grievance to the mercantile community, without the intervention of what is known as the warehousing system. They believe that the ad valorem duties which it universally imposes, will not

only be a source of infinite fraud upon the Treasury, but will drive out the honest American merchant from his rightful business and occupation, and throw the whole importing trade of the country, where a large part of it has already gone, into the hands of the unscrupulous and fraudulent agents of foreign houses. They believe, too, that the home valuation principle which it contains, will be found utterly impracticable, and will involve our collection system, if attempted, in a state of things alike unequal and unconstitutional. They believe, still further, that the rate of duties which it establishes, and more especially if their payment in cash and their assessment upon a home valuation be abandoned, will prove entirely insufficient to protect the manufacturing and mechanical labor of the country from a ruinous competition with the cheaper labor of the old world, and that not merely our cotton-mills and woollen-mills will many of them be prostrated, but great numbers of the artisans and mechanics of our humbler workshops will be thrown out of employment. They believe that large quantities of ready made clothing, of hats, of boots and shoes, of ropes and cordage, of paper, of iron ware, and wooden ware, and glass ware, will be imported under a twenty per cent. duty, and will undersell in our own markets the fabrics of our own industry. And let no gentleman believe it impossible that some of our workshops should be transferred to other lands. It has come to my knowledge, within a few days past, that an entire set of machinery for spinning and laying hemp, with the hands to manage it, has been very recently sent out from Massachusetts to Manilla, from which a liberal supply of ready-made rope may soon be expected, a fact, which, perhaps, may prove interesting to the hemp-growers in Kentucky and elsewhere. But, still again, they believe that the fresh flood of importations which such a system of revenue will throw in upon us, will not only distress and prostrate much of our manufacturing industry, but will involve the agriculture of the nation equally in its disastrous results, both by diminishing the power of paying for its products in the home market, and by compelling it to reduce the price of those products to an amount, at which they can be used to advantage in balancing the account of the country in the foreign market. They believe, yet further,