ges against him, you tax his raw material and admit the com modities of his rival at a low rate of duty? How is he to contend, not only against cheaper capital and cheaper labor, but also against a tax on his raw material? He cannot do it. Now the gentleman says, and he has a right to the opinion, that the laboring man will be benefited by the cheaper price of such cotton as he wears. He stated the other day that he thought there would be an importation of ten millions of that sort of cotton. If that should happen, there would be a very singular sight exhibited upon the ocean. For the statistical tables show that, in the course of last year, the United States exported, carried out of the country, and sold, four and a half millions of the same sort of cotton.

MR. MCDUFFIE. The coarse article?

Essentially the same. The article costing seven cents a yard in Boston. Now if an article costing six or seven cents in Boston, like the article expected to be imported, is exported in such quantities, is there any reasonable foundation for the opinion that ten millions of the same goods would be imported? This is a matter of opinion. I will not say that the expectation is groundless, because I will always treat the honorable member's opinions with the highest degree of respect. But it appears to me perfectly plain, that the descriptions of articles alluded to by him, since they are exported in such quantities, cannot be expected to be imported to such an extent as he seems inclined to anticipate.

Sir, the honorable member has expressed the opinion, that the farmers, by which term I suppose he means the persons employed in agriculture at the North, (we usually distinguish between farmers and planters,) will be greatly benefited by the bill. He supposes that they are now taxed for the benefit of their neighbors, the mechanics and manufacturers. Now, Sir, the question being asked, the answer will be decisive, Were prices ever lower? Were they ever lower to the farmers than they are now? Is it a well-founded opinion, that manufactured articles could be produced, and brought here from England, below the present rates in this country? The Senator stated a very strong case apparently, the case of the daughter of an Illinois farmer, who was clad in cotton cloth not worth over four or five cents a yard.

And why? And why, Sir? That only advances the discussion one stage. The evident answer to that question is, because there was no market of consumption for the grain on her father's farm. That is the proximate cause. Flour is now two dollars a barrel in Missouri; and under the repeal of the corn laws we have reason to believe that good flour at St. Louis will, as a correspondent in that part of the world writes me, not be above a dollar and a half a barrel. Well, if the gentleman is right in supposing that these agricultural products will rise up to a great price in consequence of any recently occurring event, he may hold very well to the other opinion, that the introduction of English commodities at such a rate of duties as will bring them in here in great quantities should be encouraged. I can only say in respect to this, that in my judgment it is a great fallacy. I do not doubt that the repeal of the corn laws may have a beneficial effect in extending liberal sentiments and a liberal spirit amongst nations. But that it is to relieve the American market of its surplus grain, I do not believe. The people of England will not consume more bread. England is annually increasing her agricultural products. Agriculture is improving. The English landlords are improving their stock with a profusion of expenditure almost incredible in this country. Last year one of these proprietors expended a hundred thousand dollars in draining his estate in order to increase the product of wheat. If you look, Sir, to Pennsylvania, to New York, to Maryland, as well as the New England States, you will find that the farmer looks for remunerating profit in the sale of his products among the mechanics and manufacturers of the towns and villages. Look to the statistics, and you will see how much of agriculture goes with every product of manufacture in the United States. Of that, England herself is an example. An honorable member from Pennsylvania of the other house has gone into that with perfect accuracy and precision, so that I need not dwell on it. I will not extend these remarks. But with regard to my proposition, you must submit to a great loss of revenue on the luxuries I have mentioned, at the same time that you reduce the wages of labor by taxing the raw material. "Look here upon this picture,

and on this," and let the country decide.

THE SUB-TREASURY.*

MR. PRESIDENT, I shall occupy the attention of the Senate but a few moments on the measure now before it. Before, however, I proceed to do this, I feel it a duty to call the attention of the honorable Senator from Alabama† and the other members of the Senate to what I see stated in the official journal of the last evening in regard to another matter which has lately received the action of this body. And I do so in order to prevent an erroneous impression from going abroad as a matter of fact. I find in "The Union" of last evening the following paragraph:

“Much has been said of false invoices, as if the importer had only to falsify his invoice, and so pay under the ad valorem system as little duty as he chose. The fact is, that the value of the goods taxed is to be settled, not by the importer's invoice, but by competent and skilful appraisers. They are to appraise the goods at their actual market value in our ports, in New York or Philadelphia; not at Canton or Manchester. In this point of view, the appraisers, whose duty it will be to understand the state of our markets, will give only such regard to the importer's invoice as it may seem entitled to. They may, if they please, take the invoice as primâ facie evidence of the actual cost of the goods, and so approximately of their actual worth in our markets. But it is only prima facie evidence. The appraisers must value the goods upon their own judgment, after all. Yet the importer is obliged to present an invoice; and one provision of the new law goes far towards making this

* Remarks in the Senate of the United States, on the 1st of August, 1846, on the Third Reading of the Bill "to provide for the better Organization of the Treasury, and for the Collection, Safe-keeping, Transfer, and Disbursement of the Public Revenue."

† Mr. Lewis.

invoice a true exponent of the value of the goods; for the law provides, that if the value placed upon the goods by the importer, on entering them at the custom-house, is less by ten per cent. than the value at which they are subsequently appraised, then twenty per cent. additional duty upon the appraised value is to be levied and collected."

Now, a more enormous error than this was never put forth to the world. The law of the land, as it now stands, requires that the value fixed upon goods by the United States appraisers shall be the value, not here, but at the place of exportation. This is a fact which all business men well know, and which the chairman of the Committee on Finance will himself confirm. Mr. Lewis here nodded assent.

Those who indulge themselves so much in remarks (not always very courteous) on the course of others, should be cautious first to understand subjects themselves. Here is an assertion of an alleged fact, while the very opposite is true.

But, not to detain the Senate longer on a matter of this sort, I will make an observation or two on the bill now pending, and, as I presume, soon to become a law.

I have always been opposed to this system of a "constitutional treasury," or "independent treasury," or "sub-treasury," which is the old name for it. The evils of such a system are insurmountable, and of various kinds. But I shall now briefly point out what I consider its evil consequences on the operations of the government, without adverting to its effect on the general business of the country. I shall preface what I have to say with a very short history of this scheme. Owing to an unhappy controversy between a former President of the Union* and the late Bank of the United States, the custody of the national funds was withdrawn from the national bank and committed to certain selected State banks. As soon as the money was deposited in their vaults, the then Secretary of the Treasury † instructed the directors of those banks to be very free and liberal in making discounts to merchants on the money in their vaults. The banks complied with this order, and the result was, that in 1837 they generally stopped payment. In consequence of this state of things, President Van Buren called a special session of Con

*General Jackson.

† Mr. Taney.

gress in September, 1837, and this project of the independent treasury was then brought forward for the first time. It failed, however, at that time, and again at a subsequent Congress; but in 1840 it passed into a law. Such, however, was found to be its practical working, that it was not suffered to continue in operation a year, but was repealed in 1841.

Now, there might have been at least some plausible reason for resorting to a new system in the keeping of the public treasure in 1837, for the national bank had ceased to exist, and the State banks had all broken down. The public money must be kept somewhere, and the government thereupon resolved to try "the untried experiment" of keeping the public funds in vaults of its own. For the last five years we have been under a system of which this formed no part. Now the first question which I wish to put to gentlemen who advocate this bill is this: Do they not all admit that the public moneys are now safe? Do they harbor any fear that there will be public defalcations? Is there any apprehension of the loss of the public treasure if this bill shall not be adopted? For my own part, I think the public deposits are perfectly safe where they are. The banks to which they are intrusted have given us the most ample security, and that security for the most part is in stocks of the United States. If our own stock is adequate security, then the banks are in fact for the most part creditors of the United States, instead of being its debtors. They hold more of our stock than they do of our funds. Under such circumstances, none can say that the public money is unsafe, and no danger, therefore, will be incurred in that respect from the postponement, or even the rejection, of this bill. The banks have acted with very great prudence and propriety; they have not indulged in any excess of discounts; but, feeling the responsibility under which they were placed, they have proceeded with discretion, and have ever been ready to accommodate the government in any manner not inconsistent with their duty to the stockholders and to the country. If gentlemen admit that the condition of the public money is at present as safe as we can make it, then what is the benefit which they seek from this bill, or where is the necessity of passing it?

Considering it as a measure of the administration, it appears to me that it is likely, instead of proving of any benefit to the