of the North! when the Hartford Convention was in session! when the language in the capitol was, "Peaceably, if we can; forcibly, if we must!" when the cry, out of doors, was, "the Potomac the boundary; the negro States by themselves! The Alleghanics the boundary; the Western savages by themselves! The Missippi the boundary, let Missouri be governed by a prefect, or given up as a haunt for wild beasts!" That time was the fit occasion for this speech; and if it had been delivered then, either in the hall of the House of Representatives, or in the den of the Hartford Convention, or in the highway among the bearers and followers of the five-striped banner, what effects must it not have produced! What terror and consternation among the plotters of disunion! But, here, in this loyal and quiet assemblage, in this season of general tranquillity and universal allegiance, the whole performance has lost its effect for want of affin

him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance, rather, behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obseured, bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as, What is all this worth? Nor those other words of delusion and folly, Liberty first, and Union afterwards: but every where, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart--Liberty and Union, now and for ever, one and inseparable! " These were noble sentiments, oratorically ex-ity, connection, or relation, to any subject depressed, but too elaborately and too artistically composed for real grief in presence of a great calamity-of which calamity I saw no sign; and therefore deemed it a fit subject for gentle castigation: and essayed it thus:

"I proceed to a different theme. Among the novelties of this debate, is that part of the speech of the senator from Massachusetts which dwells with such elaboration of declamation and orna

for want of any application, or reference, to any pending, or sentiment expressed, in the Senate; event impending in the country."

I do not quote this passage for any thing that I now see out of place in that peroration; but for a quite different purpose-for the purpose of showing that I was slow to believe in any design to subvert this Unionthat at the time of this great debate (February and March, 1830) I positively discredited it, and publicly proclaimed my incredulity. I did not want to believe it. I repulsed the belief. I pushed aside every circumstance that Mr. Webster relied on, and softened every expression that Mr. Hayne used, and considered him as limiting (practically) his threatened resistance to the tariff

ment, upon the love and blessings of union the hatred and horror of disunion. It was a part of the senator's speech which brought into full play the favorite Ciceronian figure of amplification. It was up to the rule in that partienlar. But, it seemed to me, that there was another rule, and a higher, and a precedent one. which it violated. It was the rule of propriety; that rule which requires the fitness of things to be considered; which requires the time, the place, the subject, and the audience, to be consid-act, to the kind of resistance which Virginia ered; and condemns the delivery of the argu- made to the alien and sedition laws-which was ment, and all its flowers, if it fails in congru- an appeal to the reason, judgment and feelings ence to these particulars. I thought the essay of the other States-and which had its effect in upon union and disunion had so failed. It came the speedy repeal of those laws. Mr. Calhoun to us when we were not prepared for it; when there was nothing in the Senate, nor in the coun- had not then uncovered his position in relation to try to grace its introduction; nothing to give, or nullification. I knew that Mr. Webster was to receive, effect to, or from, the impassioned speaking at him in all that he said to Mr. Hayne: scene that we witnessed. It may be, it was the but I would believe nothing against him except prophetic cry of the distracted daughter of Priam, breaking into the council, and alarming its upon his own showing, or undoubted evidence. tranquil members with vaticinations of the fall Although not a favorite statesman with me, I felt of Troy but to me, it all sounded like the sud-admiration for his high intellectual endowments, den proclamation for an earthquake, when the sun, the earth, the air, announced no such prodigy; when all the elements of nature were at rest, and sweet repose pervading the world, There was a time, and you, and I, and all of us, did see it, sir, when such a speech would have found, in its delivery, every attribute of a just and rigorous propriety! It was at a time, when the five-striped banner was waving over the land

and respect for the integrity and purity of his private life. Mr. Hayne I cordially loved; and believed, and still believe, in the loyalty of his intentions to the Union. They were both from the South-that sister Carolina, of which the other was my native State, and in both of which I have relatives and hereditary friends—

and for which I still have the affections which none but the wicked ever lose for the land of their birth: and I felt as they did in all that relates to the tariff-except their remedy. But enough for the present. The occasion will come, when we arrive at the practical application of the modern nullification doctrine, to vindicate the constitution from the political solecism of containing within itself a suicidal principle, and to vindicate the Virginia resolutions, and their authors (and, in their own language), from the "anarchical and preposterous" interpretation which has been put upon their words.

CHAPTER XLV.

REPEAL OF THE SALT TAX.

ernments work alike on the imposition and release of taxes-easy to get them on in a time of necessity-hard to get them off when the necessity has passed. So of this first war tax on salt. The "speck of war" with France, visible above the horizon in '98, soon sunk below it; and the sunshine of peace prevailed. In the year 1800-two years after the duty was raised to its maximum-the countries were on the most friendly terms; but it was not until 1807, and under the whole power of Mr. Jefferson's administration, that this temporary tax was abolished; and with it the whole system of fishing bounties and allowances founded upon it.

In the war of 1812, at the commencement of the war with Great Britain, it was renewed, with its concomitant of fishing bounties and allowances; but still as a temporary measure, limited to the termination of the war which induced it, and one year thereafter. The war terminated in 1815, and the additional year expired in 1816; but before the year was out, the tax was continued, not for a definite period, but without time-on the specious argument that, if a time was fixed, it would be difficult to get it off before the time was out: but if unfixed, it would be easy to get it off at any time: and all agreed that that was to be soon-that a temporary continuance of all the taxes was necessary until the revenue, deranged by the war, should become regular and adequate. It was continued on this specious argument-and remained in full until General Jackson's administration—and, in part, until this day (1850)—the fishing bounties and allowances in full: and that is the work

A TAX On Salt is an odious measure, hated by all people and in all time, and justly, because being an article of prime necessity, indispensable to man and to beast, and bountifully furnished them by the Giver of all good, the cost should not be burthened, nor the use be stinted by government regulation; and the principles of fair taxation would require it to be spared, because it is an agent, and a great one, in the development of many branches of agricultural and mechanical industry which add to the wealth of the country and produce revenue from the exports and consumption to which they give rise. People hate the salt tax, because they are obliged to have the salt, and cannot evade the tax : gov-ing of all governments in the levy and repeal of cruments love the tax for the same reason-because people are obliged to pay it. This would seem to apply to governments despotic or monarchial, and not to those which are representative and popular. But representative governments sometimes have calamities-war for example-when subjects of taxation diminish as need for revenue increases: and then representative governments, like others, must resort to the objects which will supply its necessities. This has twice been the case with the article of salt in the United States. The duty on that article was carried up to a high tax in the quasi war with France (1798), having been small before; and then only imposed as a war measure-to cease as soon as the war was over. But all gov

taxes. I found the salt tax in full force when I came to the Senate in 1820, strengthened by time, sustained by a manufacturing interest, and by the fishing interest (which made the tax a source of profit in the supposed return of the duty in the shape of bounties and allowances): and by the whole American system; which took the tax into its keeping, as a protection to a branch of home industry. I found efforts being made in cach House to suppress this burthen upon a prime necessary of life; and, in the ses sion 1829-30, delivered a speech in support of the laudable endeavor, of which these are some parts:

"Mr. Benton commenced his speech, by say ing that he was no advocate for unprofitable do

The

it got to the consumer, each had his profit upon
it; and whenever this profit amounted to fifty
per cent. upon the duty, it was upwards of one
hundred per cent. upon the salt. Then, the
tariff laws have deprived the consumer of thirty-
four pounds in the bushel, by substituting weight
for measure, and that weight a false one.
true weight of a measured bushel of alum salt
is eighty-four pounds; but the British tariff
laws, for the sake of multiplying the bushels,
and increasing the product of the tax, substi
tuted weight for measure; and our tariff laws
copied after them, and adopted their standard
of fifty-six pounds to the bushel.

bate, and had no ambition to add his name to the catalogue of barren orators; but that there were cases in which speaking did good; cases in which moderate abilities produced great results; and he believed the question of repealing the salt tax to be one of those cases. It had certainly been so in England. There the salt tax had been overthrown by the labors of plain men, under circumstances much more unfavorable to their undertaking than exist here. The English salt tax had continued one hundred and fifty years. It was cherished by the ministry, to whom it yielded a million and a half sterling of revenue; it was defended by the domestic salt makers, to whom it gave a monopoly of the "Mr. B. entered into statistical details, to show home market; it was consecrated by time, hav- the aggregate amount of this tax, which he stating subsisted for five generations; it was forti-ed to be enormous, and contrary to every princi fied by the habits of the people, who were born, ple of taxation, even if taxes were so necessary and had grown gray under it; and it was sanc- as to justify the taxing of salt. He stated the tioned by the necessities of the State, which re-importation of foreign salt, in 1829, at six milquired every resource of rigorous taxation. Yet it was overthrown; and the overthrow was effected by two debates, conducted, not by the orators whose renown has filled the world--not by Sheridan, Burke, Pitt, and Fox-but by plain, business men-Mr. Calcraft, Mr. Curwen, and Mr. Egerton. These patriotic members of the British Parliament commenced the war upon the British salt tax in 1817, and finished it in 1822. They commenced with the omens and auspices all against them, and ended with complete success. They abolished the salt tax in toto. They swept it all off, bravely rejecting all compromises when they had got their adversaries half vanquished, and carrying their appeals home to the people, until they had roused a spirit before which the ministry quailed, the monopolizers trembled. the Parliament gave way, and the tax fell. This example is encouraging; it is full of consolation and of hope; it shows what zeal and perseverance can do in a good cause: it shows that the cause of truth and justice is triumphant when its advocates are bold and faithful. It leads to the conviction that the American salt tax will fall as the British tax did, as soon as the people shall see that its continuance is a burthen to them, without adequate advantage to the government, and that its repeal is in their

own hands.

"The enormous amount of the tax was the first point to which Mr. B. would direct his attention. He said it was near three hundred per cent. upon Liverpool blown, and four hundred per cent. upon alum salt; but as the Liverpool was a very inferior salt, and not much used in the West, he would confine his observations to the salt of Portugal and the West Indies, called by the general name of alum. The import price of this salt was from eight to nine cents a bushel of fifty-six pounds each, and the duty upon that bushel was twenty cents. Here was a tax of upwards of two hundred per cent. Then the merchant had his profit upon the duty as well as the cost of the article: and when it went through the hands of several merchants before

lions of bushels, round numbers; the value seven hundred and fifteen thousand dollars, and the tax at twenty cents a bushel, one million two hundred thousand dollars, the merchant's profit upon that duty at fifty per cent. is six hundred thousand dollars; and the secret or hidden tax, in the shape of false weight for true measure, at the rate of thirty pounds in the bushel, was four hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Here, then, is taxation to the amount of about two millions and a quarter of dollars, upon an article costing seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and that article one of prime necessity and universal use, ranking next after bread, in the catalogue of articles for human subsistence.

"The distribution of this enormous tax upon the different sections of the Union, was the next object of Mr. B.'s inquiry; and, for this purpose, he viewed the Union under three great divisions

the Northeast, the South, and the West. To the northeast, and especially to some parts of it, he considered the salt tax to be no burthen, but rather a benefit and a money-making business. The fishing allowances and bounties produced this effect. In consideration of the salt duty, the curers and exporters of fish are allowed money out of the treasury, to the amount, as it was intended, of the salt duty paid by them; but it has been proved to be twice as much. The annual allowance is about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and the aggregate drawn from the treasury since the first imposition of the salt duty in. 1789, is shown by the treasury returns to be five millions of dollars. Much of this is drawn by undue means, as is shown by the report of the Secretary of the Treasury, at the commencement of the present session, page eight of the annual report on the finances. The Northeast makes much salt at home, and chiefly by solar evaporation, which fits it for curing fish and provisions. Much of it is proved, by the returns of the salt makers, to be used in the fisheries, while the fisheries are drawing money from the treasury under the laws which intended to indemnify them for the duty paid on foreign salt.

under the name of favor, which could be ren-year (1829) as shown in the returns to the Secdered it, as the salt was necessary in growing retary of the Treasury, is about five millions of the hogs and cattle, as well as in preparing the bushels; the importation of foreign salt, for the beef and pork for market. A reduction in the same period, as shown by the custom-house reprice of salt, next to a reduction in the price of turns, is five million nine hundred and forty-five land, was the greatest blessing which the federal thousand five hundred and forty-seven bushels. government could now confer upon the West. This shows the consumption to be eleven milMr. B. referred to the example of England, who lions of bushels, of which five are domestic. favored her provision curers, and permitted them Here the failure in the essential particular of an to import alum salt free of duty, for the encou- adequate supply is more than one half. In the ragement of the provision trade, even when her next place, how is it in point of price? Is the own salt manufacturers were producing an abun- domestic article furnished as cheap as the dant and superfluous supply of common salt. foreign? Far from it, as alrendy shown, and He showed that she did more; that she extend-still further, as can be shown. The price of the ed the same relief and encouragement to the domestic, along the coast of the Atlantic States, Irish; and he read from the British statute book varies, at the works, from thirty-seven and a an act of the British Parliament, passed in 1807, half to fifty cents; in the interior, the usual entitled An act to encourage the export of prices, at the works, are from thirty-three and a salted beef and pork from Ireland,' which allow-third cents to one dollar for the bushel of fifty ed a bounty of ten pence sterling on every hund- pounds, which can nearly be put into a half red weight of beef and pork so exported, in con- bushel measure. The prices of the foreign salt, sideration of the duty paid on the salt which at the import cities, as shown in the customwas used in the curing of it. He stated, that, house returns for 1829, are, for the Liverpool at a later period, the duty had been entirely re-blown, about fifteen cents for the bushel of fiftypealed, and the Irish, in common with other six pounds; for Turk's Island and other West British subjects, allowed a free trade with all India salt, about nine cents; for St. Ubes and the world, in salt; and then demanded, in the other Portugal salt, about eight cents; for Spanmost emphatic manner, if the people of the West ish salt, Bay of Biscay and Gibraltar, about could not obtain from the American Congress seven cents; from the Island of Malta, six cents. the justice which the oppressed Irish had pro- Leaving out the Liverpool salt, which is made cured from a British Parliament, composed of by boiling, and, therefore, contains slack and hereditary nobles, and filled with representa-bittern, a septic ingredient, which promotes putretives of rotten boroughs, and slavish retainers of the king's ministers.

6

"The American system' has taken the salt tax under its shelter and protection. The principles of that system, as I understand them, and practise upon them, are to tax, through the custom-house, the foreign rivals of our own essential productions, when, by that taxation, an adequate supply of the same article, as good and as cheap, can be made at home. These were the principles of the system (Mr. B. said) when he was initiated, and, if they had changed since, he had not changed with them; and he apprehended a promulgation of the change would produce a schism amongst its followers. Taking these to be the principles of the system, let the salt tax be brought to its test. In the first place, the domestic manufacture had enjoyed all possible protection. The duty was near three hundred per cent. on Liverpool salt, and four hundred upon alum salt; and to this must be added, so far as relates to all the interior manufactories, the protection arising from transportation, frequently equal to two or three hundred per cent. more. This great and excessive protection has been enjoyed, without interruption, for the last eighteen years, and partially for twenty years longer. This surely is time enough for the trial of a manufacture which requires but little skill or experience to carry it on. Now for the results. Have the domestic manufactories produced an adequate supply for the country? They have not; nor half enough. The production of the last

faction, and renders that salt unfit for curing provisions, and which is not used in the West, and the average price of the strong, pure, alum salt, made by solar evaporation, in hot climates, is about eight cents to the bushel. Here, then, is another lamentable failure. Instead of being sold as cheap as the foreign, the domestic salt is from four to twelve times the price of alum salt. The last inquiry is as to the quality of the domestic article. Is it as good as the foreign? This is the most essential application of the test: and here again the failure is decisive. The domestic salt will not cure provisions for exportation (the little excepted which is made, in the Northeast, by solar evaporation), nor for consumption in the South, nor for long keeping at the army posts, nor for voyages with the navy. For all these purposes it is worthless, and useless, and the provisions which are put up in it are lost, or have to be repacked, at a great expense, in alum salt. This fact is well known throughout the West, where too many citizens have paid the penalty of trusting to domestic salt, to be duped or injured by it any longer.

"And here he submitted to the Senate, that the American system, without a gross departure from its original principles, could not cover this duty any longer. It has had the full benefit of that system in high duties, imposed for a long time, on foreign salt; it had not produced an adequate supply for the country, nor half a supply; nor at as cheap a rate, by three hundred or one thousand per cent.; and what it did supply,