14 public and private credit never fails to infuse. The manufacturing1 interest revived so much that we have been continually stunned with a loud outcry about the enormous profits of that interest ; the expenditures of Government have been promptly paid at the Treasury ; and but for the Mexican war, requiring the expenditures of the surplus which had accumulated , and was annually accumulating in the Treasury, the public debt might have been, very soon discharged. In view of these incontrovertible facts, who will say that the tariff law has not most happily realized the calculations of its friends, and put to shame the financial ignorance of those public men who predicted its failure ? It has not only fulfilled the expectations of its friends, but it has extorted homage from its enemies ; for 1 think I have already proven that the Administration, which is urging its repeal, obtained power from the people by feigning friendship for the principle of that law. Its details have been attacked before the people, and it has been plausibly urged that its imposition of duties was in some respects unjust—bearing oppressively upon the people. I think these objections have been successfully met in this debate, and that it has been proven that consumers are purchasing all the articles, about which complaint has been made, at cheaper prices than at any former period. Yet I do not contend—no man on this floor contends—that the tariff act of 1842 is a perfect measure ; and if those who complain of its provisions in certain respects, would concede the correctness of the principle upon which the law is founded, and bring forward a proposition to amend such defects as experience may have proven to exist, this side of the House would freely co-operate with t^em. But it seems that nothing short of the absolute repeal of the tariff of 1842, and the enactment in its stead of a new law, founded on new principles, will satisfy the majority on this floor ; and accordingly they pertinaciously urge the passage of the bill now before the committee. The time which yet remains to me is too brief for me to attempt a discussion of this measure. I must content myself by referring to the suggestions which I made at the outset of my remarks, as to its insufficiency as a revenue measure, and by warning gentlemen of the majority that a tremendous responsibility will rest upon them, if, when the nation is engaged in war—a war of unknown duration—a war which will draw upom the Treasury of the Government to an unknown amount—they pass an act which, as has been conclusively shown by gentlemen oh both sides of the House, will not raise a sufficient revenue to pay the ordinary expenditures of Government in time of peace—thereby striking down the national credit, and with it private credit,.involving the Government and People in all the evils from which both were redeemed by the tariff act of 1842. I beg gentlemen to heed these suggestions, and give, for the sake of the country, full force to the promptings of patriotism, disregarding the obligations of party, which are nullified when they conflict with the higher obligations of patriotism. When they shall see their country plunged into the evils which. I have intimated as likely to result from the measure under consideration, they will find it difficult to appease their constituents or their consciences, by the assurance that they are merely making an interesting experiment of the hitherto untried theory of free-trade. This theory of free trade, though it has never been carried into practical effect by this Government, is not new. It developed itself in the first Con-
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTM4ODY=