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pose to pay the debt at a period so brief as to overstrain the capacity of our people. We have expended our energy and treasure to carry on the war, and it is not wise to hasten the liquidation of the debt, before we shall have had opportunity to recuperate. Yet, it appears to us, that this is precisely what our present Revenue System is doing. For the fiscal year ending on the 30th of June last, the receipts into the Federal Treasury amounted to more than $556,000,000, as follows; customs, $179,046,630 64; sale of lands, $665,031 03; direct tax, $1,974,754 12: internal revenue, $309,226,812 81; miscellaneous sources, $65,125,966 46. It has been computed that they will, at the present rates, amount for the current fiscal year to about $650,000,000. Such an extraordinary sum drawn from the productive industry of the country close upon its exhaustion from war, must, if persisted in for a long period, seriously check if not arrest its prosperity. Certainly it ought not to be done unless the necessity for it shall be imperative.

This, we are happy to say, is not the case. The civil and foreign service of the country requires only an expenditure of about forty millions of dollars. The War Department will require an equal amount, and the Navy perhaps as much more. The pension and other charges will be about twenty millions in round numbers. The interest on the public debt will not exceed one hundred and forty millions, making two hundred and eighty million dollars in all. If, then, to this we add a sinking fund of only $20,000,000 annually, we would have sufficient to pay all the yearly charges against the government and be able to liquidate the whole amount of the debt in the lifetime of a generation.

It is practicable, therefore, for Congress to reduce the aggregate of our taxes to three-fifths, if not one half, their present volume, and still maintain the public credit and meet honorably all engagements. Whatever amount is raised more than is necessary for these purposes is extortionate, and must bear upon the taxpayer with undue severity. Instead of building up the industries of the country, it wrests from the producer the very means of subsisting himself and paying any tax whatever. The agriculturist disposing of his land to liquidate his debts, instead of occupying it and providing for them with the income, is no inapt picture of a Government prosecuting such a policy. Let there be delay till our people shall have begun to prosper again, and then we shall be able to repay all with

ease.

No legislation can be more popular; but the reductions must be made with care. The ruling principle should be to retain direct taxes and to remit indirect taxes. We notice the suggestion to modify the rate of the income tax by reducing it to three per cent., and exempting all incomes less than $1,000 a year. This, we think, is not sound policy. No tax is collected so economically as this, and with so little injury to the taxpayer. It is the body of indirect taxes that are especially productive of evil. They cost the Government, in many cases, more than the amount of the tax to collect them, and they are the excuse for saddling a still larger burden by the producer upon the consumer. The manufacturer who pays three per cent. to the Government will charge his customers ten per cent. to reimburse himself.

Then, again, another principle which should govern, is the relieving from taxation of all our productions. We cannot compete with other countries,

when we put burdens on the producer that the foreigner does not lab-or under. Thus, in taxing manufactures, we are shutting out our manufacturer from foreign markets. In taxing cotton we are putting a premium on foreign production, which, under this stimulus, and the present diffe ilties our own planters experience, bids fair to seriously cripple the planting

interest.

But we have not space at present to note special cases of bar lip. Every consideration of sound political economy dictates that the tax bur den should be at once diminished, and so divided as to render it as easy as possible to carry. We are at this moment the most heavily taxed of any people; and our patience, so exemplary and deserving, should not be overborne. We acknowledge, we insist on the importance and imperative duty of maintaining the faith of the nation. But we do not lose sight of the fact that the debt was created in the first instance because it was supposed to be impossible to raise immediately by tax the amounts of money re quired. For the like reason the same principle should be applied in the matter of its payment. The liquidation should by no means be so accelerated as to operate prejudicially to the enterprise and best interests of the people. Give time to recover from the shock and depression occasioned by the war, and then there will be greater ability to endure taxation.

THE WOOL TRADE UNDER THE NEW TARIFF REGULATIONS.

Few things are illustrated so plainly in the history of governments as the impotence of legislation to control commerce and to regulate prices. Yet, strange to say, there are few results to which our recent legislation has been so largely directed. During the last five years we have hal numerous efforts made to regulate the price of gold, and no less than four important changes in the tariff, designed to enhance the prices of foreign products, in favor of the home producer. The heavy duties imposed upon foreign woolen fabrics, under the tariff of 1864, excited a certain feeling of jealousy among the wool growers, who argued that the producer of raw material should be "protected" equally with the manufacturer. The question of enhancing the duties upon wool was freely agitated, and after a severe struggle, Congress at its last session was induced to adopt a measure which, though not ostensibly intended for the wool growers, yet really hal the effect of increasing the duties upon imported wools from twenty-five tɔ thirty per cent:

Our readers may remember that, in anticipation of this legislation, we showed that the highest prices for domestic wools had prevailed under the lowest tariffs, and that with each successive advance of duty American wool had declined in value, thereupon affirming that antecedents were against the supposition that wool-growers would be benefitted by the proposed legislation. In our remarks, at the time referred to, we stated that "The wool-grower is obviously interested in supplying the manufacturer with raw material at rates which will enable him to compete with foreign fabricants; for, without that condition, domestic manufactures must droop, and the demand for home wool be curtailed and its value reduced. This proposed tariff, however, is an attempt to increase the price of wools

about twenty-five per cent. It is unnecessary to inquire what would be the effect of such a rise in raw material, for it is capable of demonstration that no such advance can really be permanently established. The course of prices under past tariffs proves that the duties upon foreign wools are powerless in regulating prices. The tariff of 1846 imposed a duty of thirty per cent., od valorem, upon wool costing eighteen cents per pound or under. In 1857 that class of wools was made duty free; and in 1861 the duty upon that grade was fixed at five per cent., ad valorem, and so remained until 1864. The course of prices after the change of duty from thirty per cent. to five per cent. is illustrated by the following comparison showing the average prices of Ohio, Mestiza, Cuba and Mexican wools, for the two years 1855 and 1856, and for the two years 1862 and 1863, when the lower duty was in force, the prices being given for the latter years in gold:

Average 1855-56 do 1862-63 Advance..

Ohio f, bl.
fleece.
cents.
45 474
48%@51%
84@ 3%

Mestiza No. 1, cents. 1684@19% 19 @214

240 2X

Cape, unwashed,

cents. 29 @32 252623 74@ 4

Mex. med. washed,

cents.

19@22% 22402534 340 34

"It thus appears that, under a reduction in the duty from thirty per cent. to five per cent., upon this particular grade of foreign wool, the price of the imported staple, instead of declining, so as to depreciate domestic wool, actually advanced, upon an average, about fifteen per cent., and was attended with an important rise in the home product, Ohio fleece averaging 34@33 cents higher in the years 1862-63 than in 1855-56. Here, then, it is clearly shown that low duties upon foreign wool are more favorable than high to domestic growers." These remarks were made by us in February last, while the proposed change in the tariff on wool was under discussion in Congress.

We have now to test the act of last summer, by the condition of the wool market under its operation. The act provides that the value upon which duties are to be assessed shall include, in addition to the invoice price, all the costs of importation, comprising export duties, freight, insurance, commissions, &c. This, upon the wools most largely imported, is equivalent to an addition of fully twenty-five per cent. to the previously existing high duties. To have realized the expectations of the authors of this measure, the price of the leading descriptions of foreign wools should have advanced, and the value of domestic should have proportionally improved. No such result, however, has followed. As in parallel cases of the increase of duty, the value of domestic wool has fallen, while the price of foreign has not been advanced. For the purpose of indicating the value of foreign and domestic wool under the present tariff, as compared with periods anterior to its operation, we present the following quo tations for wool at New York, on the 31st of October of each of the last seven years:

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We thus see that so far from the new tariff having enhanced the value of American wool, Saxony fleece is now 7a8 cents lower than a year ago; the lower qualities of Mexico, 15 cents; superfine pulled, 17 to 18 cents, and No. 1 pulled, 15 cents. Thus, on home grown wool there is a decline of 10 to 30 per cent. So much for the anticipated effect of the new tariff in enabling home wool growers to realize a higher price for their clips. Nor has the tariff been successful in making imported wools dearer. Of the twelve classes of foreign wol above quoted, nine are selling at the same price now as on the 31st October, 1865; two are lower, and Valparaiso alone is a fraction higher, the exception in that case being attribut able to the interruption of the supply by war. Could facts more strongly demonstrate the folly of attempting to benefit the wool growers by special legislation? They have had protection granted to the full extent of their demands, yet each successive grant of supposed privileges has placed their interest in a worse condition.

It is not to be overlooked that, during late months, the woolen manufacturers have suffered severe losses from an over production of goods; which have probably induced a contraction of purchases of raw material. The amount of wool received at tide-water from opening of navigation to the 22d of October, has been only 441,600 lbs., against 488,600 lbs. for the same period of last year, and 1,016,500 lbs. for the corresponding time in 1864-a movement which would seem to indicate that wool is being held in the interior instead of coming forward for consumption. The imports of foreign wool at this port from Jan. 1st to Oct. 17th, have been 53,227 bales, compared with 47,083 bales for the same period of 1865, and 107,298 bales for the corresponding period of 1864. If it be argued that the price of domestic wool has been depressed by a failure in the demand, the same reasoning can be applied to foreign wool, especially as the foregoing figures show that there has been no offset in a diminished importation. Yet we find the price of foreign wool sustained, while domestic has declined heavily.

How is it then, it may be asked, that the recent advance in duties has allowed home wools to fall so heavily, while the imported staple bas remained stationery? The change in the duties has tended, among other things, to bring about the very embarrassment in the woolen trade which is now exhibiting itself in a diminished demand for wool. The experience of the wool-growers under the new tariff adds new force to our former assertion that "their true policy is to accord to manufacturers every facility for getting the cheapest raw material the world produces. By that course our manufactures will be extended; our enlarged purchases of raw material in foreign markets will increase the price of wool there, which will have the two-fold effect of enhancing the cost of the European fabrics brought here to compete with domestic goods, and further, of correspondingly increasing the value of home grown wools, so that both manufacturer and grower would be protected by a natural and always reliable process."

AMERICAN MANUFACTURES AND EMIGRATION.

While we are not the advocates of special legislation on the part of our Government for the purpose of planting among us particular branches of industry, especially such as are not well adapted to our country, or to the genius of our people, we cannot refrain from taking deep interest in the development of manufacturing enterprise. Perhaps there is no vacation or department of labor more essential to national greatness. We may cultivate the soil, and render it sufficiently productive to nourish the inhabitants of other countries. We may dig the precious ores in quantities ample to supply every nation; we may produce the fibre for every spindle and loom; but so long as we require from other countries the principal manufactured wares necessary to our comfort, we lack a necessary element of independence. Our commerce, which ought to be a reciprocal exchange of values created by industry, is rendered, to a large extent, an agency to place us under a form of vassalage; for the taking of the products of the soil and mine abroad for manufacture, is but an element of dependence which tends to enfeeble a nation. Such a country is liable, upon the sudden recurrence of a war, to find itself in a pitiable condition indeed, deprived as it is, to a great degree, of the means of defence.

So conscious of this have the governments been that have held countries and colonies in subjection, that it was long the practice to discourage, and even to prohibit, the people of such colonies engaging in manufactures. When Porsena conquered Rome he forbade the working of iron in that State, compelling it to depend upon the forges and furnaces of Etruria. The Philistines, when they overrun the country of the Israelites, permitted no smith to work among them. The European nations of modern times, so far as lay in their power, carried out a like policy. The Dutch Government made manufacturing a penal offence in the colony of New Netherland; and the British Parliament enacted laws against slitting mills and other branches of industry in their American provinces. But it is unnecessary to multiply instances. It is evident that a state of dependence is not one of power.

This subject is invested with new interest by the events of the present period. Up to this time England has been able to retain her manufacturing supremacy, and the products of her looms now fill the markets of the world. Hitherto, her mills have produced at so low a price as to preclude successful competition. It was more profitable for the planter to raise cotton, and the farmer wool and breadstuffs for the manufacturing towns of England than to erect factories at home to convert the raw fibre into cloths, muslins and other articles of prime necessity. Statesmen often sought to change this condition by special legislation, not being sufficiently far-sighted to perceive that they were attempting to set aside the omnipo tent laws of trade. They have always failed, of course, to take away from England her supremacy. It was not legislation which could remedy the matter, but a law higher than man could devise.

Agencies are, however, now in operation, which are almost certain to modify this condition of things, and to give our people greater importance among manufacturing nations. We place no dependence upon the remarkable declaration of Mr. Gladstone in regard to the exhaustion of the

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