the quantity of rain is not so great as form erly. Why is this? It can only be accounted for by the stripping of the hills and plains of the trees, the leaves and undergrowth of which retain the rain, and allow the water to run off gradually. When the hills and mountains are stripped of forest trees, the rain rushes rapidly down their sides, raising the streams suddenly, and carrying away the bridges and banks of the streams.

especially those who are seeking homes in the West.

I believe that there has been a bill for the purpose of protecting the forests of our country, introduced by the honorable gentleman from Nevada, [Mr. KENDALL,] which is without this objection, and has been referred to the committee. Certainly there should be some kind of provision which will do away with this objection. I do not believe any gentleman is willing to destroy the entire land laws of the United States for the purpose of saving forest trees.

And there is another disadvantage which results from cutting down the forest trees. Just in proportion as the forest trees disap pear insectivorous birds disappear. Now, it Now there is another thing, and that is this: is well known that the pear tree, the peach a man may have a farm and it may not be tree, and the apple tree grow as well as ever, convenient for him to set off ten acres of land and blossom as well as ever, yet the fruit in one place for this purpose. He may plant amounts almost to nothing in certain portions five acres with forest trees in one place, and of the country where there used to be a large ten acres in another, and two in another, but yield. The reason is that with the disap- he cannot escape these penalties which are pearance of the forest trees the birds disap-imposed upon him unless he has the ten acres pear. As the birds disappear fruit-destroying insects increase; and in the increase of these insects we have a corresponding decrease in our fruit and grain crops. The question is one of vital and national importance, not only in preserving our springs and streams, but in the protection of our grains and fruits.

For these and the other reasons which have been given in this debate, I feel bound to support a measure of this kind, and believing that this bill has been properly framed to accomplish the object desired, I hope it will be passed.

Mr. HALDEMAN. I now yield four minutes to the gentleman from Illinois, [Mr. HAWLEY.]

Mr. HAWLEY. I made some inquires a few moments ago of the gentleman from Pennsylvania, [Mr. HALDEMAN,] who has charge of this bill, for the purpose of more fully understanding the character of its provisions. I have never before seen the bill. Since it came up I have examined it as carefully as the time permitted, and I am satisfied that it or something else relating to the same matter ought to pass. I have for a long time been impressed with the necessity of doing something to encourage the growth of trees on the western prairies, and, so far as we may by legislation, preserve the forests of the country.

The effect of the growth of trees on climate is well known. The cultivation of soil and the growth of trees in the western States and Territories has had a great effect upon the climate there. For instance, in the Salt Lake district, before its settlement, I believe, nothing in the shape of rain in the summer season was ever known, and yet when I was in Salt Lake three years ago they had beautiful showers, occasioned, as it was supposed, by the cultivation of the soil and the growth of trees; and so it is in all sections of our country.

Now this bill, so far as I can judge from a hasty examination of its provisions, excepting perhaps the two first sections, is just, and must do great good, and I feel that the bill ought|| to pass for the purpose of trying the experiment, and I, for one, shall vote for it, although I am not fully satisfied with the first two sections.

Mr. HALDEMAN. I yield now two minutes to the gentleman from California, [Mr. COGHLAN.]

Mr. COGHLAN. I think the principle of this bill is a good one. Any man that has ever been through the West knows that the forests there have been destroyed very rapidly; but I think the machinery of the bill will work greater evils than the benefits which it could possibly confer, for the reason that the nature of the land laws of the United States is changed by this bill, and you revive the old feudal law by saying that the Government of the United States shall retain the title to the lands, and merely lease them to the people. I believe in granting lands to the people. The machinery of the bill would be a great injury to the people of the United States,

in one place.

Mr. HALDEMAN. I now yield two minutes to the gentleman from Ohio, [Mr. BINGHAM.]

Mr. BINGHAM. I hope the House will not understand from anything that has been said by the gentleman from California that this bill operates upon any grants of lands heretofore made.

Mr. BINGHAM. Of course it operates upon grants made hereafter, or it cannot operate on anything. It is certainly competent for the people of the United States to provide by law as a condition upon which lands shall be granted for private purposes that a sufficient amount of land shall be subject to the condition proposed. Sir, it is a matter of great concern to the country. It concerns the health of the country; it concerns the wealth of the country.

The East is to-day full of witnesses of the mad folly of people sweeping away their forests, and thereby turning their land into a desert. That plain which is now barren as a rock in the vicinity of the most ancient city upon the globe, Damascus, as history informs us, was once a garden, and if there is one cause more than another that has contributed to turn that garden into a desolation and a waste, it is the absence of forests.

I am not only in favor of this bill, but I will go still further, and make it a crime punishable with fine and imprisonment for reckless men once a year to set fire to the plains of the great West, and consume timber enough annually to supply the wants of this great nation. I am glad the Committee on Agriculture have given their attention to this matter. This bill will do no harm to any one. The settler is not compelled by it to plant all the trees in a grove; he may have them planted in small groves over his place, provided only that the aggregate amounts to one tenth of the land so granted to him.

Mr. HOAR. Will the gentleman permit me to ask him a question?

Mr. BINGHAM. Certainly.

Mr. HOAR. I want to know if my construction of this bill is correct. As I read it the grant is to be on the express and perpetual condition-subsequent, that ten per cent. of the land granted shall be kept in trees. Now, suppose the original grantor cuts up his land in small parcels and disposes of it to ten or twenty persons; suppose there shall be a populous town or city, and there is an acre or less granted to a hundred or more persons, does not the tile so acquired, the title which shail have passed to those subsequent purchasers fail if the original one tenth or its equivalent is not kept in trees? No matter who may acquire an acre of land, at the end of a thousand years the title to that acre will be forfeited to the United States if some one else does not keep trees on some other tract of land.

Mr. BINGHAM, An amendment has been made excepting town sites, &c., from the penalty.

Mr. HOAR. Suppose it is not a town site. Is not the title of one grantee under the original purchase to fall, if at the end of a thousand years, perhaps, some one else does not keep some other portion of the original grant of land in trees?

Mr. BINGHAM. I have this to say to the gentleman that it would be a very forced construction of the first section of this act to conclude that any part of the title to any part of the one hundred and sixty acres of land shall fail because perchance the first purchaser from the Government had sold ten acres of that tract that had no trees on it at all, and that purchaser did not plant any trees on it. The section must be construed as an entirety; it relates to ten per cent. of the grant, which is sixteen acres, so that if there remain anywhere upon any portion of the original grant what amounts to ten per cent. of the grant in trees, no part of the title fails. The gentleman of course might add a provision to meet his suggestion, that if the grant shall be subsequently subdivided it shall be subject to the condition that the amount of land in trees shall, in the aggregate, amount to one tenth of the original grant.

Mr. HOAR. That will not do. I defer of course to the legal opinion of the chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary, [Mr. BINGHAM.] But I feel it to be my duty to say that I have spent twenty years of my life in endeavoring to understand this precise class of questions among others; and I should be constrained to advise a client, if he consulted me under this bill, that such was the coudition of his title; that is, suppose a man gets one hundred acres of land, and plants one tenth of it in trees, each acre of that land that he may sell will be subject to the condition of the original grant. And the title to that acre of land may at the end of a thousand years fall entirely, if the original sixteen acres upon which trees were first planted or their equivalent somewhere on the grant are not kept in trees by somebody else with whom the owner of the acre of land may have no connection.

Mr. BINGHAM. I had supposed that in the administration of justice care would be taken to see to it that the person who might be punished had been guilty of some positive and deliberate offense. However, I can see well enough that it may be proper to make some provision to meet the point the gentleman suggests.

Mr. BUTLER, of Massachusetts. Take the case where we grant a million acres of land in one body to a single railroad company.

Mr. STEVENSON. We shall not do that any more. [Laughter.]

Mr. BUTLER, of Massachusetts. I do not know what will be done, after the passage of "Yerba Buena." [Laughter.]

Mr. SARGENT. Trees will not grow on that island. as the gentleman knows.

Mr. BUTLER, of Massachusetts. Suppose we grant a million acres to a single grantee, and he is to keep one hundred thousand acres

Mr. HALDEMAN. I feel constrained to interrupt this conversational debate. Time is wearing away, and I am anxious to have this measure disposed of. I call for a vote. Mr. BUTLER, of Massachusetts. no objection.

I have

question where woods are destroyed by fire or other accidental cause.

The SPEAKER. If there be no objection, the amendment will be adopted.

There being no objection, the amendment was agreed to.

The question recurred on the amendment of Mr. Lowe, to strike out the first two sections of the bill.

The motion was not agreed to, there beingayes thirty-seven, noes not counted.

Mr. HOAR. I move that the bill be laid on the table.

The question being taken on agreeing to the motion, there were-ayes forty-four, noes not counted.

Mr. TAFFE called for the yeas and nays. The yeas and nays were not ordered.

So the motion to lay on the table was not agreed to.

The question then recurred on ordering the bill as amended to be engrossed for a third reading.

The question being taken, there were-ayes seventy-three, noes not counted.

So the bill was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading; and being engrossed, it was accordingly read the third time.

The question then recurred on the passage

of the bill.

Mr. KING called for the yeas and nays. The yeas and nays were ordered. The question was taken; and it was decided in the negative-yeas 81, nays 87, not voting 72; as follows:

YEAS-Messrs. Acker, Banks, Barnum, Beck, Bell, Bingham, Bird. Buckley, Burdett, Roderick R. Butler, Caldwell, Conger, Conner, Critcher, Crossland, Duell, Farnsworth, Farwell, Henry D. Foster, Getz, Golladay, Griffith, Haldeman, Hambleton, Harmer, Harper, Hawley, Gerry W. Hazelton, John W. Hazelton, Herndon, Hill, Holman, Hooper, Kelley, Kerr, Killinger. Lamison, Lamport, McClelland, MeJunkin, McKinney, McNeely, Merriam, Benjamin F. Meyers, Leonard Myers, Niblack, Packard, Packer, Peck, Eli Perry, Poland, Potter, Price, Prindle, Ellis H. Roberts, William R. Roberts, Rogers, Roosevelt, Sargent, Seeley. Sessions, Shanks, Sherwood, Slocum, Sloss, Thomas J. Speer, Sprague, Stevenson, Storm, Sutherland, Swann, Terry, Dwight Townsend, Tuthill, Vaughan, Voorhees, Whitthorne, Williams of Indiana, Jeremiah M. Wilson, Winchester, and Young-81.

NAYS-Messrs. Adams, Ambler, Arthur, Averill, Barber. Beveridge, Austin Blair, James G. Blair, Boles, Braxton, George M. Brooks, Buffinton, Burchard, Benjamin F. Butler, William T. Clark, Cobb, Coburn, Coghlan, Comingo, Creely, Davis Dawes, Donnan. Dunnell, Eames, Eldredge, Elliott, Finkelnburg, Wilder D. Foster. Frye, Garfield, Handley, Havens, Hay, Hereford, Hibbard, Hoar, Houghton, Kellogg, Kendall, Ketcham, King, Lewis, Lowe, Maynard, McCormick, McCrary, McGrew, McHeary, McIntyre, Mercur, Mitchell, Monroe, Morey, Morphis, Negley, Palmer, Hosea W. Parker, Isaac C. Parker, Perce, Peters, Rainey, Read, Edward Y. Rice, John M. Rice, Ritchie, Rusk, Shoemaker, Slater, H. Boardman Smith. John A. Smith, Worthington C. Smith, R. Milton Speer, Stevens, Stoughton, Taffe, Thomas, Washington Townsend, Turner, Twichell. Tyner. Upson, Van Trump, Wakeman, Wallace. Whiteley, and Willard-87.

NOT VOTING-Messrs. Ames, Archer, Barry, Beatty, Bigby, Biggs, Bright, James Brooks, Campbeli, Carroll, Freeman Clarke, Cotton, Cox, Crebs, Crocker, Darrall, De Large, Dickey, Dox, Du Bose, Duke, Ely, Forker, Charles Foster, Garrett, Goodrica, Hale, Halsey. Hancock, Hanks, George E. Harris, John T. Harris, Hays, Kinsella, Lansing, Leach, Lynch, Manson, Marshall, McKee, Merrick. Moore, Morgan, Orr, Pendleton, Aaron F. Perry, Platt, Porter, Randall, Robinson, Sawyer, Scofield, Sheldon, Shellabarger, Shober, Snapp, Snyder, Starkweather. Stowell, Strong. St. John, Sypher, Waddell, Walden, Waldron, Walls, Warren, Wells, Wheeler, Williams of New York, John T. Wilson, and Wood-72. So the bill was not passed.

Mr. DAWES moved to reconsider the vote just taken; and also moved that the motion to reconsider be laid on the table. The latter motion was agreed to.

PRINTING OF BRITISH COUNTER CASE.

Mr. BANKS, by unanimous consent, reported from the Committee on Foreign Affairs the following resolution; which was referred under the law to the Committee on Printing: Resolved by the House of Representatives, (the Senste concurring,) That there be printed twenty-two thousand copies of the message of the President, of 42D CONG. 2D SESS.-No. 184.

April 26, 1872, transmitting, in answer to a resolution of the House, the British counter case under the treaty of Washington, and ten thousand copies of the volumes of appendix accompanying the case presented on the part of the Government of her Britannic Majesty; four thousand copies of the case for the use of the Senate, and fifteen thousand for the use of the House; and three thousand copies of the appendix for the use of the Senate and seven thousand for the use of the House.

CENTENNIAL INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION.

Mr. BANKS. Mr. Speaker, I desire, on behalf of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, to give a notice in relation to a bill (H. R. No. 2618) relative to the centennial international exhibition to be held in the city of. Philadelphia, State of Pennsylvania, in the year 1876, which was yesterday referred to that committee with instructions.

Mr. Speaker, the Committee on Foreign Affairs requests the delegation from the several States to present to the committce before ten o'clock Thursday morning the names of two persons from each congressional district under the apportionment of the Forty-Third Congress, and four from the State at large, and the delegates from each Territory to furnish the names of two persons for each Territory, to be inserted as corporators of the "centennial board of finance," provided for by the bill referred to the committee "relauve to the centennial international exhibition to be held in the city of Philadelphia, State of Pennsylvania, in the year 1876." The names thus presented will be reported as corporators by the committee without revision. If the representation is increased by the new apportionment, the delegations will report names for

additional members.

Mr. W. R. ROBERTS. I now demand the the regular order of business.

Mr. BANKS. It is understoood that the names in the bill as referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs will be stricken out, unless gentlemen choose to reserve them, and those presented to the committee by members of the House will be reported in substitution for those names in the bill, unless, as I have said, they are reserved.

MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT.

A message was received from the President of the United States, by Mr. BABCOCK, one of his Secretaries, notifying the House that he had approved and signed bills of the following titles:

An act (H. R. No. 1866) for the relief of Mrs. Frances A. McKinney; and

An act (H. R. No. 1657) to amend section two act of August 30, 1852, in relation to the transportation and exportation of imported goods, wares, and merchandise in bonds through certain ports in the State of Texas.

ORDER OF BUSINESS.

Mr. DAWES. I move that the rules be suspended, and the House resolve itself into Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union, to take up the tariff and internal revenue bill.

Mr. CONGER. I desire to give a notice to the House. Mr. W. R. ROBERTS. I demand the regular order of business.

Mr. CONGER rose.

The SPEAKER. The regular order of business having been called for, nothing is in order except the question on the motion to go into Committee of the Whole on the tariff bill. The motion was agreed to; and the House accordingly resolved itself into Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union, (Mr. ScoFIELD in the chair,) and resumed the consideration of the bill (H. R. No. 2322) to reduce duties on imports and to reduce internal taxes, and for other purposes.

Mr. CONGER. The gentleman from Massachusetts has not acted in accordance with his promise to me. Mr. DAWES.

Gentlemen all around the

House called for the regular order of business, and of course I could not give the gentleman unanimous consent. Let the gentleman give his notice now.

Mr. CONGER. Mr. Chairman, I have no objection to giving notice now. I will do now what I ought to have had the approval of doing before the House went into committee

Mr. W. R. ROBERTS. I call for the regular order of business, and object to anything else.

Mr. CONGER. I should like to know from whom objection comes.

The CHAIRMAN. It comes from members to the right of the House.

Mr. W. R. ROBERTS. I object, and call for the regular order of business.

Mr. E. H. ROBERTS addressed the committee in remarks which will appear in the Appendix.

Mr. BECK. Mr. Chairman, I do not propose to make what is usually called a tariff speech; that subject has been discussed and rediscussed until it is threadbare. To say nothing of the great debates in former days, since I have been in Congress my friend and colleague on the Committee of Ways and Means [Mr. BROOKS] has exhibited the contents of his peddler's wagon to the country until they are familiar to all. The gentleman from Illinois [Mr. MARSHALL] has portrayed in colors I could not imitate the oppressions heaped on the tax ridden farmer. My colleague on the committee [Mr. KERR] has exposed and laid bare the sophisms of protection. My colleague from Kentucky [Mr. CROSSLAND] has set forth with great ability the oppressions of the present system of tariff extortion. The gentlemen from Missouri and Illinois [Messrs. FINKELNBURG and BURCHARD] and others, have with reason, philosophy, and fact shown how the great agricultural interests, as well as the labor of the country everywhere, have been trampled in the dust to build up and enrich a few favored interests, until it seems to me that the necessity of revenue reform and a withdrawal of the outrageous protection now existing has been made clear to the plainest understanding. I shall therefore speak to the merits of the several bills now pending and do what little I can to make available the relief which it is possible now to obtain, rather than theorize about free trade and protection, or seek to make a parade of what little I know as to the true principles which ought to regulate the collection of customs duties and internal revenue taxation.

Everybody knows and everybody admits that the only legitimate power Government has to take from the citizen the proceeds of his labor is to obtain the means required to maintain and support the machinery necessary to protect life, liberty, and property within its jurisdiction. When money is extorted from one citizen to enrich another, and when still more is taken, after the first is misapplied, to maintain wasteful and corrupt expenditures by Government officials, the legitimate ends of republican rule are overthrown, and Government becomes an engine of oppression instead of a shield and protection to the citizen.

It is hardly necessary to set forth the difference between a revenue and a protective tariff, which may be briefly stated thus: a revenue tariff seeks to put the largest amount of money into the Treasury that can be obtained with the least possible cost beyond the increase of price, which must necessarily be paid in order to obtain the sum which the Treasury receives. A protective tariff, on the other hand, seeks by taxation to diminish or exclude the importation of the protected articles from foreign countries, and thus enables the home producer to charge the home consumer the price it would cost in foreign countries, with the tariff tax added, and pocket the whole increased charge himself. When the tax imposed is prohibitory no revenue is obtained; when

not absolutely prohibitory, revenue is only obtained in the proportion that the consumption of the imported article bears to the whole consumption of it.

To illustrate: if a tax of two cents a pound is imposed on coffee, every cent of the enhanced price paid by the consumer because of the tax goes into the Treasury to defray the expenses of the Government-a strictly revenue tariff. If a tax of two cents a pound is imposed on salt, and by reason thereof no foreign salt is imported, the price of salt produced at home is increased two cents a pound, all of which is pocketed by the home producer; in other words, is taken from the pockets of all who use salt to enrich a few producers of the article, without in any way relieving the burdens necessary to support the Govern ment; that is the prohibitory protective tariff. If a tax of two cents a pound is imposed on iron imported from abroad, and by reason of it only one tenth of the iron used is imported, the price of all consumed being increased two cents a pound, nine tenths of the tax paid by the people is pocketed by the producer, only one tenth going to relieve them from the burdens of taxation, which they must draw on their other resources to meet, as they must sustain the Government in some way; that is a highly protective tariff, very much like the one we are now staggering under, and which the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. KELLEY] and his friends are struggling so hard to perpetuate.

To accomplish this end they are willing to remove taxation from anything that simply produces revenue, and transfers nothing from the pockets of the consumer to the pockets of their friends, especially if by so doing they can render it impossible to sustain the Government and at the same time diminish the tariff or tax now imposed on such articles as they produce, and thus pocket from one half to three fourths of the tax the mass of the people are forced to pay for their products. I refer by way of illustration to the repeal of the duties on tea and coffee, which has been championed with so much zeal and ability in both Houses of Congress by the high protective tariff advocates from the State of Pennsylvania. Those two articles, at a very moderate tax, paid into the Treasury last year $19,291,093 44. Not a dollar of the tax imposed on them went anywhere else; no man paid for anything he did not get an equivalent for in diminished taxation elsewhere; it was purely a revenue tax; hence the war that has been waged on it so successfully in both Houses of Congress. These two articles, at an average cost per capita to each inhabitant of about fifty cents, paid into the Treasury nearly two million dollars more than iron and all its manufactures, and leather and all its manufactures, as the following table will show: Value and duty on imported articles for the year ending June 30, 1871. Value. Tariff. Coffee $29,428,698 27 $10,969,098 77 Cotton, manufactured..... 26,587,994 91 10,773,832 48 Hemp, and manufactures of 8,013,364 43 1,717,059 47 31,852,034 83 13,766,121 32

Iron, and manufactures of

Steel, and manufactures of Leather, and manufactures of.. Silk, and manufactures of Sugar.. Tea Wool, and manufactures of.

52,766,068 37 33,539,475 93 Each man can tell how much it costs him to get the $17,600,000 into the Treasury from iron and leather manufactures when he finds that all the articles composed of either of these materials cost him annually almost fifty per cent. more than they otherwise would, in order that his more favored fellow-citizens in Pennsylvania and elsewhere may be enriched at his expense.

imposed on similar products imported from foreign countries. The high protective tariff of 1842 did more than all else to drive the Whigs from power in 1844. Its odious exactions and discriminations in favor of protected interests brought down denunciations loud and deep upon its authors and adherents, though the average duties were only twenty-eight and a half per cent. It was repealed in 1846, and the average rates from that time till 1857 were that year, was reduced to about nineteen, which was the average on dutiables when our present high tariff system was inaugurated in 1861.

If accurate facts and figures are preferred they can be found in the admirable and exhaustive speech of my colleague on the committee, [Mr. BURCHARD,] wherein he shows by facts and statistics which cannot be successfully denied that the people of this country in addition to all the taxes which find their way into the Treasury pay annually to the iron princes of Pennsylvania and elsewhere, in the form of bounty, pension, tax extortion, robbery call it what you will-on the manufac-twenty-five per cent., which, by the tariff of tures of iron $24,000,000, or $4,260,000 more than was paid last year on tea and coffee; the only difference being that all the tea and coffee tax went into the Treasury, while not a dollar of this $24,000,000 on iron did, but was most likely invested by the beneficiaries in United States bonds, on which not a cent of tax is paid toward the support of the Government. Perhaps the farmer and laborer of the South and West will be gratified to learn that they are contributing so liberally to the erection of the palatial residences and princely fortunes of their eastern brethren. They may feel that they are compensated for it all by having tea and coffee put on the free list, and it seemed almost cruel for my colleague [Mr. KERR] to dispel the delusion by such remarks as the following:

"Under our present tariff, and, indeed, so long as Government is supported by taxation, the promise or boast of a 'free breakfast table' is simply an able-bodied absurdity, no matter how free you make tea, coffee, and sugar. Let us see. Your table is held together by taxed nails and hinges, and covered with a taxed cloth. Your breakfast is prepared by a cook or a good wife who is clad from the soles of her feet to the top of her head in taxed clothing. It is prepared in a stove made of taxed iron, over a fire made of taxed coal, kindled with a taxed match, and adjusted with taxed shovel and tongs. Your bread is leavened with taxed soda, saleratus or yeast powders. Your victuals are served to you on taxed dishes, and eaten from taxed plates, or drunk out of taxed cups, saucers, or tumblers, with the aid of taxed knives, forks, and spoons. Your food is seasoned with taxed salt, pepper, vinegar, oil, or other condiments. Your meal may consist in part of taxed fruits, such as prunes, figs, raisins, or nuts. Your bread, potatoes, and other substantials of daily diet, are produced by the farmer by the aid of taxed implements of every kind, and brought to your house over railroads or on wagons made of taxed iron and steel. Your good wife is even compelled to seek culinary wisdom from a cook-book' printed on taxed paper with taxed ink and taxed type. Let us reform or abolish all these covert, mean, vexatious, dishonest, and oppressive taxes, that pay much to monopoly and favorites and little or nothing to the Treasury. Then we can wisely turn to those taxes which contribute to the support of the State alone, and never to monopoly, rings, or favorites."

I hope our laboring men will keep a memorandum of the prices they now pay for coffee by the pound, and of what they will pay when the tax is removed. I venture to predict that the man who buys by the pound at a time, especially in States like Kentucky, where pennies are unknown as change, will not be able to buy his coffee from the retailer one cent a pound cheaper after the tax is removed than he does now, and that the pretended relief will prove a delusion. Gentlemen are mistaken when they assume that tea and coffee were not considered proper subjects of taxation during the old Democratic administrations. The fathers of the Republic, by the tariff of 1792, imposed a duty of 4 cents a pound on coffee, and 10 cents, 18 cents, and 32 cents per pound on tea. Under the tariff from 1812 to 1816 the duty was 10 cents on coffee, and 24 cents, 36 cents, and 64 cents on tea; under the tariff of 1824, coffee was taxed 5 cents, and tea 12 cents, 25 cents, and 50 cents. The tariff of 1832 taxed tea 10 cents a pound and made coffee free. For the first time since the formation of the Government, tea and coffee were both put on the free list by the tariff of 1842, after the rout of the Democratic party by the Whigs under General Harrison, and were doubtless made free by the managers then, as they are sought to be now, for the purpose of making it necessary to raise the means to carry on the Government by taxing articles and industries which were sought to be protected by the tariff

I have been induced to make these remarks in advance, because the committee has ventured to ask the House to reconsider its action and continue a reduced tax on tea and coffee, which will produce, say $16,000,000 of revenue, instead of putting them on the free list. We have, of course, very little hope that our recommendation will be heeded after all that has taken place. Still we owed something to ourselves, and we have therefore resubmitted the question; while doing so, we had as prudent men to make the other reductions upon the hypothesis that tea and coffee would be made free hereafter. The real reduction of revenue in the tariff bill. if that is done, will be $33,000,000, instead of about $19,000,000 as presented and generally accepted. In the face of our bill the reduction on tea and coffee is only $5,297,948.

If we are sustained, the other $14,000,000 now derived from these articles can, by proper amendments, be taken from the present taxes on salt, coal, and the manufactures of iron, cotton, woolens, &c., and by a greatly extended free list; but we could not safely assume that we would be sustained, as both the House and Senate had determined otherwise. I do not complain of the conduct of the House. I regret it, and felt at the time that the action taken so early in the session was a vote of want of confidence in the committee, which seriously embarrassed all their future deliberations. It was the first time since the war that any Speaker had ventured to constitute a Committee of Ways and Means a majority of which was in favor of revenue reform, and while we expected attacks to be made in the House by gentlemen like Mr. KELLEY and Mr. MERCUR, of Pennsylvania, and in the Senate by Mr. SCOTT, of Pennsylvania, and their high protective adherents, we did not expect to be crippled in all our efforts by the union of our own friends with the protectionists. It is always fair to assume that the representatives of protected interests which are enriched at the expense of the mass of the people, will take no step however plausible which does not tend to perpetuate their own monopolies. "Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes;" so when Pennsyl vania protectionists lead the Democratic hosts to reduce taxation, and paralyze the action of the Democratic and revenue reform wing of the Committee of Ways and Means, I fear it bodes no good to an oppressed and tax-ridden people.

It is one thing to reduce revenue simply, and another and a very different thing to reduce taxation unjustly imposed and improperly maintained. Every form of taxation is odious, and human ingenuity has not. and perhaps never will, devise a system which will operate with perfect justice and equality. The framers of the Constitution could think of no better method in which to impose direct taxes than to apportion them among the several States according to the number of their respective inhabitants. Yet every man knows that if that mode of taxation was resorted to to-day to raise the revenue necessary to support the Government, the plundered and poverty-stricken people of the southern States would have to pay five times as much in proportion to their wealth as the inhabitants of

Direct taxation being impossible, indirect taxation is the only alternative, under the power given to Congress to lay and collect "duties, imposts, and excises," our present system of tariff and internal revenue taxation has grown up; and while the public debt and its interest, together with the pensions and bounties, have to be provided for in addition to the ordinary expenses of the Government, tariff duties must be maintained. Free trade is, therefore, impossible, even if we all deemed it desirable. Reform in the present mode of assessing and collecting duties is all that can be accomplished; it is simply a question for practical legislators, who ought to have no other object in view except, to obtain the necessary revenue upon the most equitable terms, to pass such laws as will most surely accomplish that result. No citizen or class of citizens have any right to require any other class of citizens to contribute out of their earnings to enrich them; and no legislator can honestly vote either to pass or maintain laws which he knows produce such results.

However odious internal revenue taxes are and I confess they are extremely so, they have one merit: all the money collected goes into the Treasury. They are avowedly levied on consumption, and each man pays in exact proportion to the amount he consumes. These taxes are reduced now to tobacco, spirits, and stamps. The man who does not drink nor use tobacco pays nothing on these articles, which pay about four fifths of the whole internal revenue those who do, pay exactly in pro portion to the quantity used; and the Government, if its officials are honest, gets it all. The same may be said of tea, coffee, and all that large class of imports not produced in this country, which are purchased with the surplus products of our soil, or the manufactured arti cles exported by us. No man complains of what he is required to pay for anything he buys if the increased cost caused by the imposition of the tax goes into the Treasury, and is honestly applied to support the Government. The complaint comes when the increased cost caused by the tax imposed goes not into the Treasury, but into the pocket of some other citizen who has succeeded in getting laws enacted by Congress to make his neighbors spend their earnings for his support.

It is because the bill of the committee strikes at that character of legislation, because it seeks to reduce taxation far beyond the mere reduction it makes in the revenue, and seeks to lighten the oppression which bears so heavily on labor, and especially on agricultural labor, consumption, and products, that I give it my support, and voted that it should be reported to the House where its provisions can be amended, extended, and corrected, so as to make them conform to the wants and just demands of the country. It is no bantling of mine. I would have brought tariff taxation, if not back to the average of nineteen per cent. as it was in 1860 when our general prosperity was greater than at any other period of our history, at least to twenty-five, as it was from 1846 to 1857, which the rapidly increasing price of labor, scarcity of materials,

and cost of articles in Europe, and especially in Great Britain, would enable us to do. The products of our protected industries are factures now, not manufactures as formerly. The machinery of this country has a producing power estimated as equal to one hundred and sixty million human beings. The product of machinery needs no protection, as no nation has any better than we.

My colleague on the committee [Mr. BROOKS] has submitted to me the programme of what he thinks the tariff ought to be; in the main I agree with him. He will lay it before the House and the country to-day, and therefore I will not consume time now by stating my ideas of the modifications I would suggest in detail, but will reserve that for the five minutes debate on the items of the bill. The bill of the committee is certainly far better than either that of the minority or that of the Senate, and infinitely better than the existing condition of things which the protectionists in both Houses secretly desire to perpetuate either by dividing the friends of reduction and reform on plausible but impracticable amendments and substitutes, or by forcing an adjournment before any modification can be perfected, as was tried the other day under the lead of another distinguished Pennsylvania protectionist, [Mr. DICKEY.] Of course the object is not openly avowed; such avowal would defeat it. They

stoop to conquer,' ," and judging from the action of the House it is possible, I had almost said it is probable, they will succeed. Yet I hardly think any Representative from the West or South would feel much confidence in the indorsement of his people if he abandons the field without making an honest, intelligent, and persistent effort to initiate at least a system of tariff reform. The gentleman from Illinois [Mr. BURCHARD] presents the following facts, which my examination of the subject confirms:

"The reductions in the bill of the duties upon but six classes of manufactures lessen the revenue not quite ten million dollars, but lighten taxation $54,000,000. A comparison of the domestic production with the imports will show as follows:

stituents are rapidly learning, if they do not now know, that mere reduction of revenue does not necessarily relieve burdens, while, as in the case of salt, a loss of revenue of a fraction over a million, by making it free, would relieve the consumers of it, and every human being consumes it, over three million dollars. The people are asking, I might say imploring, relief from monopoly rather than from mere taxation or revenue.

We may as well look existing facts squarely in the face. The Democrats are in a minority, and we have a few whose constituents require them to vote for local interests. A bill granting substantial relief can only be passed by the aid of the revenue reform Republican members from the West, and while I and most of the gentlemen on this side of the House think that $250,000,000 is ample to supply all the wants and the reasonable stealings of the Administration, we cannot expect that men who sustain the Government, and are responsible for its success, will deprive it of the means they think necessary for its support. We would not reduce the revenues of the country if we were in power below the estimates of expenses submitted by our Secretary of the Treasury, no matter how unreasonable the opposition might show them to be, and we cannot and ought not to expect the coöperation of the friends of the Administration in reducing the revenues below the estimates submitted by him. The mode of reduction and the relief from taxes now paid to protected monopolies in making reductions down to the point to which Republicans can go is the great object all friends of revenue reform. regardless of politics, must unite to accomplish, if we expect to bring about useful results.

The Secretary submits the following: Estimates for the Treasury Department for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1873. Legislative establishment........... Executive establishment........... Judicial establishment.....

Military establishment.
Naval establishment...
Indian affairs.
Pensions......

Public works underTreasury Department. Interior Department..... War Department...... Navy Department..... Agricultural Department.

..$3,104,500 00

244,800 00

..14,609,662 97 1,483,100 00

$3,421,812 40

17,443,531 38

3,383,350 00

31,422,509 88

18,946,088 95

5,445,617 97

30,480,000 00

$615,522

$1,175,000

Leather............
Iron....
Steel.
Woolens.
Cottons....

329,258

3,890,000

26,500 00

19,468,562 97

23,000,000

Postal service........

5,474,001 00

Miscellaneous...

11,258,325 44

Permanent appropriations.

126.281,974 00

Sinking fund..

22,895,930 00

5,783,333 00

Total.

That alone will commend the bill to the favorable consideration of the House and the country, and there is no good reason why by proper amendments the relief may not be more than doubled. The propositions of the Senate and the minority are simply ridiculous in many regards. Take, for example, salt in bulk, now taxed one hundred and thirty-nine and one sixth per cent.; ten per cent. off, as the Senate proposes, is child's play. So with all the manufactures of leather, iron, cotton, and wool, as both the Senate and the minority propose, ten per cent. indiscriminate reduction is wholly inadequate. The average rate of reduction proposed by the committee on these manufactures is about twenty per cent.; it ought to have been much more, and hope the House will by proper amendments increase it. This much can be safely said for the bill: nearly all its changes of existing duties are reductions; every blow struck, however feeble, is in the right direction; some monopoly is aimed at, some abuse is modified if not corrected; an outpost here and a bastion there are overthrown, so that when another attack is made the citadel of monopoly will fall, it is to be hoped never to rise again.

I know how hard it is for Democrats to vote against any sort of proposition reducing taxation in any form. Fortunately, our con

The first item of $206,270,408 25 was paid in gold, the premium on which made the receip's in currency considerably in excess of $400,000,000. The receipts from customs for the first nine months of the current fiscal year exceed those of the corresponding period of the last about $8,000,000, as the following letter shows:

TREASURY DEPARTMENT, BUREAU OF STATISTICS, April 23, 1872. DEAR SIR: The amount received from customs for the nine months ended March 31, 1871, was $155,061,255, and for the corresponding period of 1872, partly estimated, $163,000,000. Very respectfully,

E. YOUNG, Chief of Bureau. Hon. J. B. BECK, M. C., House of Representatives. The natural swell from miscellaneous sou will also increase the revenues, while the inter

sources

nal revenue when the income tax comes in will not be materially decreased.

Without going into further details at present, it is perfectly safe to assume that the existing system of taxation will produce for the next fiscal year over $400,000,000, even without the income tax, which expires with the current year; that tax with increased exemptions ought to be renewed, for reasons which I will state hereafter, and although I could not get the committee to agree with me I hope the House will, as I think I can convince a majority of this body that it can be made when divested of some of its inquisitorial features not only the most equitable of all the taxes imposed, by being a tax on accumulations of wealth, and generally wealth obtained by protected monop oly, but that it is the only way in which the rich can be made to bear their proper portion of the burdens of taxation. But even if it is not renewed we will certainly have a surplus revenue of over $100,000,000 after meeting all the demands estimated for by the Secretary of the Treasury, and God knows they are extravagant enough.

Take the bill of the committee; make tea and coffee free, if you will have it so; adopt all our recommendations for reduction of internal taxation, and the revenue will only be reduced a fraction over $41,000,000; add by amendment a further reduction of revenue of $9,000,000 by reducing the burdens still further on the highly protected manufactures, which can be done in such manner as to re duce actual taxation fourfold what would be taken from the revenue, and you will still have reached only $50,000,000. The gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. KELLEY] has repeatedly urged a reduction of revenue of at least $75,000,000.

You can follow his recommendations if you choose, and take $4,000,000 more from tobacco and $6,000,000 more from stamps, and then only reach $60,000,000 of revenue reduction, so that the most ardent supporter of the Administration can with perfect safety and propriety, even from his stand-point in regard to expenditures, support the further reduction to which I now desire specially to call the attention of the committee.

I have maintained in the Committee of Ways and Means, and hope by the aid of the House to make good the proposition, that a further reduction of at least $16,500,000 ought to be made, and can be made, in tariff duties without injury to anybody and to the substantial benefit of all, simply by permitting one half of the customs duties to be paid in currency. We will collect during the next fiscal year certainly $220,000,000 from customs. We will only need about $110,000,000 hereafter to pay the interest on the public debt; we have no other use for gold. The Government becomes a jobber and a gold gambler with the citizen in the disposition of the surplus $110,000,000 which he is forced to buy at not less than ten, really twelve per cent. premium on an average, so that the Government officials may speculate with and gamble upon it.

I would like to hear some gentleman tell Congress and the country why the Government should continue to depreciate its own obligations by refusing to receive legal tender notes for customs duties beyond the amount which must be collected in gold to pay interest | on the public debt. I can see no reason for it except that by keeping up the demand for $220,000,000 annually the premium of ten or twelve per cent. is maintained, and the untaxed bondholder not only gets his six per cent. interest in gold, but in addition gets at least ten per cent. on the interest, in the currency which every other creditor of the Government is compelled to receive, coercing it from those who are required to pay customs duties in gold.

An amendment to the tariff bill such as I suggest, and shall offer at the proper time, (having been unable to obtain favorable consideration of bills for that purpose which

the gentleman from New York [Mr. E. H. ROBERTS] and myself severally introduced since this session of Congress opened,) would at once uniformly and equitably reduce the tariff taxation certainly five per cent., or $11,000,000, and would at the same time stop the disgraceful control Government has more than once exercised over the business of the country by its gold-gambling operations, while it would, in my judgment, by appreciating the value of the currency, reduce the price of gold five per cent., and thus diminish the tax on the $110,000,000 required to be paid in gold to meet interest, to the amount of $5,500,000, making a real reduction of $16,500,000, or two thirds as much as the Senate proposes to relieve the country from by its ten per cent. uniform scale of reduction, and far more than the minority of the House committee propose in their tariff bill if their free list is left out. Of course every bondholder here will object, and I fear they are potent on this floor, but they have no right to object. We provide for the payment of their interest punctually in gold, and they have no good reason to complain because we make the money other people have to take more nearly on a par with what they receive. The public credit cannot suffer by it, and official morality will certainly be promoted, while the business community will not be constantly compelled to be on the watch to see when the heavy hand of the Secretary of the Treasury, with the $120,000,000 in gold be has now locked up in his vaults, is about to fall on them and break up all their calculations. I have tried to look at this matter fairly and impartially, and after as careful consideration as I am able to give it, I can see no valid objection to the adoption of the proposition which I propose to submit, and now call the attention of the committee to, in order that its merits may be canvassed before a vote is asked. I will ask the Clerk to read it. The Clerk read as follows:

Be it enacted, &c., That all laws and parts of laws requiring that all duties on imports shall be paid in gold be, and they are hereby, so far modified that hereafter one half of all duties on imports may be paid, by the individual or corporation paying the same, to the proper collecting officer of the United States, of such import duties, in the legal-tender notes of the United States, and the other half of the duties which are required by law to be paid by such person or corporation shall be paid in gold; and all laws and parts of laws now in force are repealed so far as they come in conflict with the provisions of this act.

Mr. BECK. Mr. Chairman, if that proposition is adopted, as it ought to be, I see no reason why a law should not be passed at once authorizing, perhaps requiring, the Secretary of the Treasury to loan to banks or individuals in the vicinity where legal-tender notes are collected for customs or internal taxation such portions of the funds as were not needed to pay the expenses of the Government at a reasonable rate of interest, payable on demand or on short notices, the loan to be secured by deposit of United States bonds in sufficent amount to make the Government safe against either loss or delay in payment, and thus prevent the withdrawal from circulation of an undue portion of the currency of the country, I have no doubt from five to seven million dollars could be thus annually made, and the derangement consequent upon locking up large sums of money in the Treasury be prevented. I have not matured any distinct plan by which to carry out that idea, but the distinguished chairman of the Committee on Banking and Currency, the gentleman from Massachusetts, [Mr. HOOPER,] could doubtless do it in an hour.

I may as well say just here that I am one of those who believe that it is extreme folly, I might say absolute stupidity, to impose taxes to pay off any part of the principal of the public debt. No creditor of the Government wants the money on his bonds. He thinks it a hardship to be required to receive it. Our public obligations bear five and six per cent.

interest. Money is worth eight per cent. at least, perhaps the average is ten. Why take money worth ten per cent. from the tax-payers to discharge obligations bearing six or less, when the holder of the obligation does not want the money? No man would do it in the management of his private affairs, and no sensible legislator would in public matters; at least no sensible Congress should allow it to be done. We are as a people getting rich very fast; the receipts from customs and internal revenue taxation show that our revenues are increasing rapidly. Nine thousand million dol lars of the property of the people was destroyed by the war, as Mr. Wells showed in his report two years ago, and we are struggling to restore it. We are to-day worth, say, $32,318,000. In ten years we will be worth $64,000,000, as the following statement made by Mr. Wells, when Special Commissioner of the Revenue, shows: Percentage of debt

National
wealth.

$16,150,000,000

to property.

Why check our steadily advancing prosperity by enormous taxation to pay debts which our creditors do not want paid? We can diminish the burden of the debt one half without paying a dollar, simply by letting it run ten years. If I, being worth $100,000 to-day, owe $10,000 or ten per cent. of what I am worth, can double my estate in ten years and pay the interest on what I owe, the $10,000 debt would then only be five per cent. of my estate. My creditors' security would be doubled and my liability in proportion to my means of payment would be lessened fifty per cent. We are, as a people, able to bring about precisely that result now in ten years, if we are not taxed to death to pay a debt not demandable and not wanted. We can in ten years by doing nothing double our means of payment; we will increase our credit in like proportion and diminish the burden one half what it is now; and it is supreme folly to be making pay ments on the principal of what we owe when time is steadily and rapidly removing the pres sure of the burden by our rapid increase of wealth. Thirty years ago our present debt would have bankrupted the country; thirty years hence, if we simply let it alone, it will be a mere bagatelle. Therefore all the undue haste to tax the people to pay a portion of it now is a miserable waste of our resources. Gentlemen will not fail to remember that by internal taxation we provide for all the bur dens imposed by the war. The $144,000,000 collected from that source last year paid the interest on the public debt and nearly the whole of the pensions besides. The bounty lands and homesteads donated to soldiers and settlers cost nothing. On the contrary, idle property is made productive, so that the tariff, now as before the war, has only to furnish ways and means to pay the ordinary expenses of the Government.

We collected last fiscal year $383,323,944 89, and while the Secretary estimates for an expenditure next year of $300,000,000, every reflecting man knows that we ought not to spend over $250,000,000, even allowing a big margin for the stealing which has become a part of the system of government under the present Administration. We all remember the cry of extravagance raised against the administration of Mr. Buchanan and the prom ises of retrenchment and reform that were made by the Republican party on their entrance into power, yet the total ordinary expenses of the last year of Mr. Buchanan's administration amounted to $55,901,000. We have increased in population since then twen ty-two per cent, yet our ordinary expenses, including pensions exceed $180,000,000, per

annum.

The distinguished chairman of the