Thirty Years' View (Vol. I of 2)

"Still another objection he had to the bill. It proposed on its face, and, as he thought, directly, to restrict the action of our successors. We had no power, he contended, to bind our successors. We might legislate prospectively, and a future Congress could stop the course of this prospective legislation. He had, however, no alternative but to vote for the bill, with all its defects, because it contained some provisions which the state of the country rendered indispensably necessary."

He then stated the reason which would induce him to vote for the bill notwithstanding these objections. It was found in the attitude of South Carolina, and in the extreme desire which he had to remove all cause of discontent in that State, and to enable her to return to the state of feeling which belonged to an affectionate member of the Union. For that reason he would do what was satisfactory to her, though not agreeable to himself.

While the bill was still depending before the Senate, the bill itself for which the leave was being asked, made its appearance at the door of the chamber, with a right to enter it, in the shape of an act passed by the House, and sent to the Senate for concurrence. This was a new feature in the game, and occasioned the Senate bill to be immediately dropped, and the House bill put in its place; and which, being quickly put to the vote, was passed, 29 to 16.

"Yeas. – Messrs. Bell, Bibb, Black, Calhoun, Chambers, Clay, Clayton, Ewing, Foot, Forsyth, Frelinghuysen, Grundy, Hill, Holmes, Johnston, King, Mangum, Miller, Moore, Maudain, Poindexter, Rives, Robinson, Sprague, Tomlinson, Tyler, Waggaman, White, Wright.

"Nays. – Messrs. Benton, Buckner, Dallas, Dickerson, Dudley, Hendricks, Knight, Prentiss, Robbins, Ruggles, Seymour, Silsbee, Smith, Tipton, Webster, Wilkins."

And the bill was then called a "compromise," which the dictionaries define to be an "agreement without the intervention of arbitrators;" and so called, it was immediately proclaimed to be sacred and inviolable, as founded on mutual consent, although the only share which the manufacturing States (Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont) had in making this "compromise," was to see it sprung upon them without notice, executed upon them as a surprise, and forced upon them by anti-tariff votes, against the strenuous resistance of their senators and representatives in both Houses of Congress.

An incident which attended the discussion of this bill shows the manner in which great measures – especially a bill of many particulars, like the tariff, which affords an opportunity of gratifying small interests – may be worked through a legislative body, even the Senate of the United States, by other reasons than those derived from its merits. The case was this: There were a few small manufactories in Connecticut and some other New England States, of a coarse cloth called, not Kendall green, but Kendall cotton – quite antithetically, as the article was made wholly of wool – of which much was also imported. As it was an article exclusively for the laboring population, the tariff of the preceding session made it virtually free, imposing only a duty of five per centum on the value of the cloth and the same on the wool of which it was made. Now this article was put up in this "compromise" bill which was to reduce duties, to fifty per centum, aggravated by an arbitrary minimum valuation, and by the legerdemain of retaining the five per centum duty on the foreign wool which they used, and which was equivalent to making it free, and reduced to that low rate to harmonize the duty on the raw material and the cloth. General Smith, of Maryland, moved to strike out this duty, so flagrantly in contrast to the professed objects of the bill, and in fraud of the wool duty; and that motion brought out the reason why it was put there – which was, that it was necessary to secure the passage of the bill. Mr. Foot, of Connecticut, said: "This was an important feature of the bill, in which his constituents had a great interest. Gentlemen from the South had agreed to it; and they were competent to guard their own interest." Mr. Clay said: "The provision proposed to be stricken out was an essential part of the compromise, which, if struck out, would destroy the whole." Mr. Bell of New Hampshire, said: "The passage of the bill depended upon it. If struck out, he should feel himself compelled to vote against the bill." So it was admitted by those who knew what they said, that this item had been put into the bill while in a state of concoction out of doors, and as a douceur to conciliate the votes which were to pass it. Thereupon Mr. Benton stood up, and

"Animadverted on the reason which was alleged for this extraordinary augmentation of duties in a bill which was to reduce duties. The reason was candidly expressed on this floor. There were a few small manufactories of these woollens in Connecticut; and unless these manufactories be protected by an increase of duties, certain members avow their determination to vote against the whole bill! This is the secret – no! not a secret, for it is proclaimed. It was a secret, but is not now. Two or three little factories in Connecticut must be protected; and that by imposing an annual tax upon the wearers of these coarse woollens of four or five times the value of the fee-simple estate of the factories. Better far, as a point of economy and justice, to purchase them and burn them. The whole American system is to be given up in the year 1842; and why impose an annual tax of near five hundred thousand dollars, upon the laboring community, to prolong, for a few years, a few small branches of that system, when the whole bill has the axe to the root, and nods to its fall? But, said Mr. B., these manufactories of coarse woollens, to be protected by this bill, are not even American; they are rather Asiatic establishments in America; for they get their wool from Asia, and not from America. The importation of this wool is one million two hundred and fifty thousand pounds weight; it comes chiefly from Smyrna, and costs less than eight cents a pound. It was made free of duty at the last session of Congress, as an equivalent to these very manufactories for the reduction of the duty on coarse woollens to five per cent. The two measures went together, and were, each, a consideration for the other. Before that time, and by the act of 1828, this coarse wool was heavily dutied for the benefit of the home wool growers. It was subjected to a double duty, one of four cents on the pound, and the other of fifty per cent. on the value. As a measure of compromise, this double duty was abolished at the last session. The wool for these factories was admitted duty free, and, as an equivalent to the community, the woollens made out of the corresponding kind of wool were admitted at a nominal duty. It was a bargain, entered into in open Congress, and sealed with all the forms of law. Now, in six months after the bargain was made, it is to be broken. The manufacturers are to have the duty on woollens run up to fifty per cent. for protection, and are still to receive the foreign wool free of duty. In plain English, they are to retain the pay which was given them for reducing the duties on these coarse woollens, and they are to have the duties restored.

"He said it was contrary to the whole tenor and policy of the bill, and presented the strange contradiction of multiplying duties tenfold, upon an article of prime necessity, used exclusively by the laboring part of the community, while reducing duties or abolishing them in toto, upon every article used by the rich and luxurious. Silks were to be free; cambrics and fine linens were to be free; muslins, and casimeres, and broad cloths were to be reduced; but the coarse woollens, worn by the laborers of every color and every occupation, of every sex and of every age, bond or free – these coarse woollens, necessary to shelter the exposed laborer from cold and damp, are to be put up tenfold in point of tax, and the cost of procuring them doubled to the wearer.

"The American value, and not the foreign cost, will be the basis of computation for the twenty per cent. The difference, when all is fair, is about thirty-five per cent. in the value; so that an importation of coarse woollens, costing one million in Europe, and now to pay five per cent. on that cost, will be valued, if all is fair, at one million three hundred and fifty thousand dollars; and the twenty per cent. will be calculated on that sum, and will give two hundred and seventy thousand dollars, instead of two hundred thousand dollars, for the quantum of the tax. It will be near sixfold, instead of four-fold, and that if all is fair; but if there are gross errors or gross frauds in the valuation, as every human being knows there must be, the real tax may be far above sixfold. On this very floor, and in this very debate, we hear it computed, by way of recommending this bill to the manufacturers, that the twenty per cent. on the statute book will exceed thirty in the custom-house.

"Mr. B. took a view of the circumstances which had attended the duties on these coarse woollens since he had been in Congress. Every act had discriminated in favor of these goods, because they were used by the poor and the laborer. The act of 1824 fixed the duties upon them at a rate one third less than on other woollens; the act of 1828 fixed it at upwards of one half less; the act of 1832 fixed it nine tenths less. All these discriminations in favor of coarse woollens were made upon the avowed principle of favoring the laborers, bond and free, – the slave which works the field for his master, the mariner, the miner, the steamboat hand, the worker in stone and wood, and every out-door occupation. It was intended by the framers of all these acts, and especially by the supporters of the act of 1832, that this class of our population, so meritorious from their daily labor, so much overlooked in the operations of the government, because of their little weight in the political scale, should at least receive one boon from Congress – they should receive their working clothes free of tax. This was the intention of successive Congresses; it was the performance of this Congress in its act of the last session; and now, in six short months since this boon was granted, before the act had gone into effect, the very week before the act was to go into effect, the boon so lately granted, is to be snatched away, and the day laborer taxed higher than ever; taxed fifty per cent. upon his working clothes! while gentlemen and ladies are to have silks and cambrics, and fine linen, free of any tax at all!

"In allusion to the alleged competency of the South to guard its own interest, as averred by Mr. Foot, Mr. Benton said that was a species of ability not confined to the South, but existent also in the North – whether indigenous or exotic he could not say – but certainly existent there, at least in some of the small States; and active when duties were to be raised on Kendal cotton cloth, and the wool of which it was made to remain free."

The motion of General Smith was rejected, of course, and by the same vote which passed the bill, no one of those giving way an inch of ground in the House who had promised out of doors to stand by the bill. Another incident to which the discussion of this bill gave rise, and the memory of which is necessary to the understanding of the times, was the character of "protection" which Mr. Clay openly claimed for it; and the peremptory manner in which he and his friends vindicated that claim in open Senate, and to the face of Mr. Calhoun. The circumstances were these: Mr. Forsyth objected to the leave asked by Mr. Clay to introduce his bill, because it was a revenue bill, the origination of which under the constitution exclusively belonged to the House of Representatives, the immediate representative of the people. And this gave rise to an episodical debate, in which Mr. Clay said: "The main object of the bill is not revenue, but protection." – In answer to several senators who said the bill was an abandonment of the protective principle, Mr. Clay said: "The language of the bill authorized no such construction, and that no one would be justified in inferring that there was to be an abandonment of the system of protection." – And Mr. Clayton, of Delaware, a supporter of the bill, said: "The government cannot be kept together if the principle of protection were to be discarded in our policy; and declared that he would pause before he surrendered that principle, even to save the Union." – Mr. Webster said: "The bill is brought forward by the distinguished senator from Kentucky, who professes to have renounced none of his former opinions as to the constitutionality and expediency of protection." – And Mr. Clay said further: "The bill assumes, as a basis, adequate protection for nine years, and less (protection) beyond that term. The friends of protection say to their opponents, we are willing to take a lease of nine years, with the long chapter of accidents beyond that period, including the chance of war, the restoration of concord, and along with it a conviction common to all, of the utility of protection; and in consideration of it, if, in 1842 none of these contingencies shall have been realized, we are willing to submit, as long as Congress may think proper, with a maximum of twenty per centum," &c. – "He avowed his object in framing the bill was to secure that protection to manufactures which every one foresaw must otherwise soon be swept away." So that the bill was declared to be one of protection (and upon sufficient data), upon a lease of nine years and a half, with many chances for converting the lease into a fee simple at the end of its run; which, in fact, was done; but with such excess of protection as to produce a revulsion, and another tariff catastrophe in 1846. The continuance of protection was claimed in argument by Mr. Clay and his friends throughout the discussion, but here it was made a point on which the fate of the bill depended, and on which enough of its friends to defeat it declared they would not support it except as a protective measure. Mr. Calhoun in other parts of the debate had declared the bill to be an abandonment of protection; but at this critical point, when such a denial from him would have been the instant death warrant of the bill, he said nothing. His desire for its passage must have been overpowering when he could hear such declarations without repeating his denial.

On the main point, that of the constitutionality of originating the bill in the Senate, Mr. Webster spoke the law of Parliament when he said:

"It was purely a question of privilege, and the decision of it belonged alone to the other House. The Senate, by the constitution, could not originate bills for raising revenue. It was of no consequence whether the rate of duty were increased or decreased; if it was a money bill it belonged to the House to originate it. In the House there was a Committee of Ways and Means organized expressly for such objects. There was no such committee in the Senate. The constitutional provision was taken from the practice of the British Parliament, whose usages were well known to the framers of the constitution, with the modification that the Senate might alter and amend money bills, which was denied by the House of Commons to the Lords. This subject belongs exclusively to the House of Representatives. The attempt to evade the question, by contending that the present bill was intended for protection and not for revenue, afforded no relief, for it was protection by means of revenue. It was not the less a money bill from its object being protection. After 1842 this bill would raise the revenue, or it would not be raised by existing laws. He was altogether opposed to the provisions of this bill; but this objection was one which belonged to the House of Representatives."

Another incident which illustrates the vice and tyranny of this outside concoction of measures between chiefs, to be supported in the House by their adherents as they fix it, occurred in the progress of this bill. Mr. Benton, perceiving that there was no corresponding reduction of drawback provided for on the exportation of the manufactured article made out of an imported material on which duty was to be reduced, and supposing it to have been an oversight in the framing of the bill, moved an amendment to that effect; and meeting resistance, stood up, and said:

"His motion did not extend to the general system of drawbacks, but only to those special cases in which the exporter was authorized to draw from the treasury the amount of money which he had paid into it on the importation of the materials which he had manufactured. The amount of drawback to be allowed in every case had been adjusted to the amount of duty paid, and as all these duties were to be periodically reduced by the bill, it would follow, as a regular consequence, that the drawback should undergo equal reductions at the same time. Mr. B. would illustrate his motion by stating a single case – the case of refined sugar. The drawback payable on this sugar was five cents a pound. These five cents rested upon a duty of three cents, now payable on the importation of foreign brown sugar. It was ascertained that it required nearly two pounds of brown sugar to make a pound of refined sugar, and five cents was held to be the amount of duty paid on the quantity of brown sugar which made the pound of refined sugar. It was simply a reimbursement of what he had paid. By this bill the duty of foreign brown sugar will be reduced immediately to two and a half cents a pound, and afterwards will be periodically reduced until the year 1842, when it will be but six-tenths of a cent, very little more than one-sixth of the duty when five cents the pound were allowed for a drawback. Now, if the drawback is not reduced in proportion to the reduction of the duty on the raw sugar, two very injurious consequences will result to the public: first, that a large sum of money will be annually taken out of the treasury in gratuitous bounties to sugar refiners; and next, that the consumers of refined sugar will have to pay more for American refined sugar than foreigners will; for the refiners getting a bounty of five cents a pound on all that is exported, will export all, unless the American consumer will pay the bounty also. Mr. B. could not undertake to say how much money would be drawn from the treasury, as a mere bounty, if this amendment did not prevail. It must, however, be great. The drawback was now frequently a hundred thousand dollars a year, and great frauds were committed to obtain it. Frauds to the amount of forty thousand dollars a year had been detected, and this while the inducement was small and inconsiderable; but, as fast as that inducement swells from year to year, the temptation to commit frauds must increase; and the amount drawn by fraud, added to that drawn by the letter of the law, must be enormous. Mr. B. did not think it necessary to illustrate his motion by further examples, but said there were other cases which would be as strong as that of refined sugar; and justice to the public required all to be checked at once, by adopting the amendment he had offered."

This amendment was lost, although its necessity was self-evident, and supported by Mr. Calhoun's vote; but Mr. Clay was inexorable, and would allow of no amendment which was not offered by friends of the bill: a qualification which usually attends all this class of outside legislation. In the end, I saw the amendment adopted, as it regarded refined sugars, after it began to take hundreds of thousands per annum from the treasury, and was hastening on to millions per annum. The vote on its rejection in the compromise bill, was:

"Yeas. – Messrs. Benton, Buckner, Calhoun, Dallas, Dickerson, Dudley, Forsyth, Johnson, Kane, King, Rives, Robinson, Seymour, Tomlinson, Webster, White, Wilkins, Wright – 18.

"Nays. – Messrs. Bell, Bibb, Black, Clay, Clayton, Ewing, Foot, Grundy, Hendricks, Holmes, Knight, Mangum, Miller, Moore, Naudain, Poindexter, Prentiss, Robbins, Silsbee, Smith, Sprague, Tipton, Troup, Tyler. – 24."

But the protective feature of the bill, which sat hardest upon the Southern members, and, at one time, seemed to put an end to the "compromise," was a proposition, by Mr. Clay, to substitute home valuations for foreign on imported goods; and on which home valuation, the duty was to be computed. This was no part of the bill concocted by Mr. Clay and Mr. Calhoun; and, when offered, evidently took the latter gentleman by surprise, who pronounced it unconstitutional, unequal, and unjust; averred the objections to the proposition to be insurmountable; and declared that, if adopted, would compel him to vote against the whole bill. On the other hand, Mr. Clayton and others, declared the adoption of the amendment to be indispensable; and boldly made known their determination to sacrifice the bill, if it was not adopted. A brief and sharp debate took place, in the course of which Mr. Calhoun declared his opinions to remain unaltered, and Mr. Clayton moved to lay the bill upon the table. Its fate seemed, at that time, to be sealed; and certainly would have been, if the vote on its passage had then been taken; but an adjournment was moved, and carried; and, on the next day, and after further debate, and the question on Mr. Clay's proposition about to be taken, Mr. Calhoun declared that it had become necessary for him to determine whether he would vote for or against it; said he would vote for it, otherwise the bill would be lost. He then called upon the reporters in the gallery to notice well what he said, as he intended his declaration to be part of the proceedings: and that he voted upon the conditions: first, that no valuation should be adopted, which would make the duties unequal in different parts; and secondly, that the duties themselves should not become an element in the valuation. The practical sense of General Smith immediately exposed the futility of these conditions, which were looked upon, on all sides, as a mere salvo for an inevitable vote, extorted from him by the exigencies of his position; and several senators reminded him that his intentions and motives could have no effect upon the law, which would be executed according to its own words. The following is the debate on this point, very curious in itself, even in the outside view it gives of the manner of affecting great national legislation; and much more so in the inside view of the manner of passing this particular measure, so lauded in its day; and to understand which, the outside view must first be seen. It appears thus, in the prepared debates:

"Mr. Clay now rose to propose the amendment, of which he had previously given notice. The object was, that, after the period prescribed by the bill, all duties should thereafter be assessed on a valuation made at the port in which the goods are first imported, and under 'such regulations as may be prescribed by law.' Mr. C. said it would be seen, by this amendment, that, in place of having a foreign valuation, it was intended to have a home one. It was believed by the friends of the protective system, that such a regulation was necessary. It was believed by many of the friends of the system, that, after the period of nine and a half years, the most of our manufactures will be sufficiently grown to be able to support themselves under a duty of twenty per cent., if properly laid; but that, under a system of foreign valuation, such would not be the case. They say that it would be more detrimental to their interests than the lowest scale of duties that could be imposed; and you propose to fix a standard of duties. They are willing to take you at your word, provided you regulate this in a way to do them justice.

"Mr. Smith opposed the amendment, on the ground that it would be an increase of duties; that it had been tried before; that it would be impracticable, unequal, unjust, and productive of confusion, inasmuch as imported goods were constantly varying in value, and were well known to be, at all times, cheaper in New-York than in the commercial cities south of it. This would have the effect of drawing all the trade of the United States to New-York.

"Mr. Clay said he did not think it expedient, in deciding this question, to go forward five or six years, and make that an obstacle to the passage of a great national measure, which is not to go into operation until after that period. The honorable senator from Maryland said that the measure would be impracticable. Well, sir, if so, it will not be adopted. We do not adopt it now, said Mr. C.; we only adopt the principle, leaving it to future legislation to adjust the details. Besides, it would be the restoration of an ancient principle, known since the foundation of the government. It was but at the last session that the discriminating duty on goods coming from this side, and beyond the Cape of Good Hope, ten per cent. on one, and twenty per cent. on the other, was repealed. On what principle was it, said he, that this discrimination ever prevailed? On the principle of the home value. Were it not for the fraudulent invoices which every gentleman in this country was familiar with, he would not urge the amendment; but it was to detect and prevent these frauds that he looked upon the insertion of the clause as essentially necessary.