THE TARIFF-TEA, COFFEE, AND SUGAR.

Remarks in the House of Representatives, December 23, 1861.

MR. SPEAKER: I desire to say that, at the last session, I opposed, in common with all the gentlemen upon this side of the House, the tariff and tax bill; and in some brief remarks then submitted, I predicted that the result of increasing the duties would be a great and disastrous diminution of the importations, and by consequence of the revenue from customs.

We have before us now the annual report of the Secretary of the Treasury, four months later, admitting that his estimate of receipts from duties on articles imported, or to be imported, during the current fiscal year, must already be reduced by $25,000,000. Such has been the effect of the "Morrill tariff" of 1861, and the act of August, amending it. Yet, instead of pursuing a course of policy which every principle of political economy demands, and promoting an increase of the revenues by reducing duties and encouraging importations, we are about still further to diminish the revenues by increasing the duty to such an extent as will, in a little while, amount to prohibition. Why, sir, in portions of the Northwest it already requires four bushels of corn to buy one pound of coffee. Corn, in Illinois is selling at seven cents a bushel, and in some places has been used as fuel, instead of wood, because it is now cheaper. Yet gentlemen of the Eastern States are continually applying the same Sangradian panacea, holding fast to the absurd notion that an increase of duty will, always and inevitably be followed by a corresponding increase of revenue. They still insist, whenever the receipts run low, on adding to the tariff of duties, without remembering that the natural effect of the increase, even in ordinary times, is to diminish importations, and that now, especially, the loss of the cotton export, amounting last year to $191,000,000, or, deducting the precious metals, to nearly two-thirds of our entire exportation, and the depressing influence every way of the present crisis, have already cut down the importations to nearly one-half, as compared with the last five or six years. In the port of New York alone the falling off amounts to about one hundred millions of dollars. How, I beg to know, are you to have revenue from imports when nothing is imported? Ex nihilo nihil fit.

The more you fetter com-
The higher you make the

But not so think the wise men of the East. merce the more they believe it will flourish. duties the more will revenue flow into your Treasury. Do gentlemen forget that customs duty is a voluntary tax, and that beyond a certain point no one will tax himself of his own free will? When times are

prosperous and money plenty, and trade and commerce are brisk, men will buy much, though the price be raised. But in times of depression, when wages are low, money scarce, and employment difficult to be had —in just such times, in short, as are now upon us-merchants will not import because consumers will not purchase if the price be high. The true policy, therefore, clearly is to lower the impost and encourage importation, and not to add to all the other causes which now combine to destroy this main source of revenue, the killing effect of increased duties. This is quackery, not statesmanship; and I predict to-day that your high tariffs will not realize for the current year even the revised and amended estimate of the Secretary of the Treasury.

Now, sir, I submit the question without going into the argument further, that at the least, this bill should be postponed until the entire tariff system can be digested and accommodated to the changed condition of the country; until it can be made literally and strictly a revenue tariff—a war tariff, if you please. As it now stands, it is an incongruous amalgam of three separate acts and two or three different systems of duties—the ad valorem, the specific, and a compound of the two. I think, sir, that the bill should certainly go over for two or three weeks, until the whole subject can be arranged, collated and harmonized. This can be done without the slightest loss to the revenue. How much, sir, does the gentleman from Vermont expect to realize within the next three weeks from the passage of this act? Will there be an extraordinary importation of tea from China and Japan within that time? Will there be any such of coffee and sugar? What is in the wind? As to the latter article of sugar, let me say further, that the West has heretofore received its sugars mostly from the lower States on the Mississippi; but an embargo has been laid on the trade of that river ever since April or May last. You have shut up, blockaded, the Mississippi for us; and more effectually, too, than any port on the southern coast. Since that time our sugars have been received from the East, and the price has of course been very greatly enhanced. In addition to thus cutting us off from our market, you increased the duties upon sugars at the late session; and now you propose, in hot haste, to raise that duty still higher, and thus to place the article wholly beyond the reach of most of those in the West who are accustomed to regard it as a necessary of life; and I believe, sir, that it is consumed perhaps to a larger extent there than in the States of the East.

It seems to me, Mr. Speaker, that some other surer and wiser mode ought to be devised for increasing the waning revenues of the Government. Your expenditures are $500,000,000; your income but $50,000,000, enough to last just one month. If the Constitution did

not forbid a tax upon exports, something might, in that way, be added, because there has been a very large increase of exportations within the last six months. But even in that case, I have not the sligi test doubt you would, upon each recurring pressure, raise the duties, to and thus break down your exports, as you have already your imports by the same folly. True, the country is benefited to a large extent, doubtless by this heavy exportation, and the West receives a share of that benefit. But let it be remembered that this increased exportation from the West through the seaports of the East, arises from the fact that the navigation of the Mississippi has been closed to us, and thus the products which heretofore we were accustomed to carry down that river have been forced to find a market in foreign countries. Cut off as we are from all other means of outlet except by way of the lakes, and thus, in part, through a foreign country, and with our railroads leading to the East, for the most part in the hands of Eastern directors or bondholders, the tariff of freights has at the same time been fully doubled, thus increasing the burdens upon our trade both ways, so largely as to amount in a little while longer to absolute prohibition; while, to make the matter still worse, that great and natural channel of railroad communication, also, from the southern portions of the Northwest eastward, the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, has been closed for all purposes of travel and transportation for the last six months, and it seems almost impossible for some cause-surely not "military necessity," but shall I say base selfishness on the part of more northern and eastern or rival roads?—to procure the opening of it upon any terms.

Sir, I have spoken so far solely for the purpose of directing the attention of the House and the country to this subject, and not with any vain notion of being hearkened to now or here. The bill will pass forthwith, and just as you received it from the Treasury Department. It has been impossible to obtain even from this side of the House, the poor privilege of the yeas and nays upon the question of suspending the rules to allow it to be reported; and it is vain to offer opposition to the measure. Let it pass. But I am resolved that the record shall be made up for the GREAT HEREAFTER, and that the responsibility for this and other kindred measures shall be fixed just where it belongs.

CHARGES OF DISLOYALTY: 1862.*

MR. SPEAKER: I was just waiting for an opportunity to call the attention of the House to that statement myself, having received it from some unknown source a moment ago. I do not know, of course, what the motive just now of the gentleman from Pennsylvania may be, nor do I care. My purpose then was just what it is now, to give a plain, direct, emphatic contradiction-a flat denial to the infamous statement and insinuation contained in the newspaper paragraph just read. I never wrote a letter or a line upòn political subjects, least of all, on the question of secession, to the Baltimore South, or to any other paper, or to any man south of Mason and Dixon's line, since this revolt began-never; and I defy the production of it. The charge is false, infamous, scandalous; and, it is beyond endurance, too, that a man's reputation shall be at the mercy of every scavenger employed to visit the haunts of vice in a great city, a mere local editor of an irresponsible newspaper, who may choose to parade before the country false and malicious libels like this. I avail myself of this opportunity, to say that I enter into no defence, and shall enter into none, until some letter shall be produced here which have written, or authorized to be written, referring to "bleeding Dixie," or making any suggestion "how the Yankees might be defeated." If any such are in existence, I pro

* During the Thirty-Seventh Congress there was a strong outside pressure against Mr. Vallandigham, and, on the part of many members of that body, a great willingness to yield to the pressure. And yet no successful attempt to impeach, or even to cast reproach upon his loyalty, has ever been made. The efforts in that direction, made seven times in Congress, were only a reproach to the parties by whom they were made.

On the 7th of January, 1862, Mr. Vallandigham, in reply to Mr. Hutchins, of Ohio, said:

"To-day the magnitude and true character of the war stand confessed, and its real purposes begin to be revealed; and I am justified, or soon will be justified by thousands, who, a little while ago, condemned me. But I appealed, in the beginning, as I appeal now, alike to the near and the distant future; and by the judgment of that impartial tribunal, even in the present generation, I will abide, or, if my name and memory shall fade away out of the record of these times, then will these calumnies perish with them."

But, of these attacks. the most important and serious was that made in the House of Representatives on the 19th of February, 1862, by Mr. Hickman, of Pennsylvania, who offered a resolution, "instructing the Committee on the Judiciary to inquire into the truth of certain charges of disloyalty, made in the local columns of a Baltimore newspaper, against C. L. Vallandigham, of Ohio.” Mr. Vallandigham spoke in reply, as above.

nounce them, here and now, utter and impudent forgeries. I have said that I enter upon no defence. I deny that it is the duty or the right of any member to rise here, and call for investigation founded upon statements like this; and I only regret that I did not have the opportunity to denounce this report before the chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary rose, and, in this formal manner, called the attention of the House to it-himself the accuser and the judge. Sir, I have for five years been a member of this House, and I never rose to a personal explanation but once, and that to correct a report of the proceedings of the House. I have always considered such mere personal explanations and controversies with the press, as unbecoming the dignity of the House.

Nevertheless, I did intend to make this the first exception in my congressional career, and to say-and I wish my words reported, not only at the desk here officially, but in the gallery--that I denounce, in advance, this foul and infamous statement, that I have been in treasonable, or even suspicious correspondence with any one in that State -loyal though it is to the Union-or in any other State, or have ever uttered one sentiment inconsistent with my duty, not only as a member of this House, but as a citizen of the United States-one who has taken a solemn oath to support the Constitution, and who, thank God, has never tainted that oath in thought, or word, or deed. I have had the right, and have exercised it, and as God liveth, and my soul liveth, and as He is my judge, I will exercise it still in this House, and out of it, of vindicating the rights of the American citizen; and beyond that I have never gone. My sentiments will be found in the records of the House, except as I have made them public otherwise, and they will be found nowhere else. There, sir, is their sole repository. And foreseeing, more than a year ago, but especially in the early part of December, 1860, the magnitude and true character of the revolution or rebellion into which this country was about to be plunged, I then resolved not to write, although your own mails still carried the letters, nor have I written, one solitary syllable or line-as to the Gulf States, months even before secession began-to any one residing in a seceded State. And yet, the gentleman avails himself now of this paragraph, to give dignity and importance to charges of the falsest and most infamous character. Had the letter been produced; had the charge come in any tangible or authentic shape; had any editor of any respectable newspaper, even, indorsed the accusation, and made it specific, there might have been some apology; but the gentleman knows well that this base insinuation was placed in the local columns of a vilė newspaper, put there by some person who had never seen any such letter.