MARCH, 1812.

War Taxes.

H. of R.

tlemen who has seen the document will correct me. If we should be engaged in war, and I see no possible way to avoid it, unless we bring on ourselves, and on the nation, the utmost degree of degradation and disgrace, then that supply of foreign spirits, which we have heretofore derived from the British West Indies, will be in a great measure cut off; and in that event, the home dis

fund that would enable us to get rid of the other items of internal taxation, so odious in their nature, and so oppressive in their operation, was the principal object of the amendment I had the honor to propose to the fifth resolution. I do consider this amendment of importance, if viewed in its operation and effects on the system of taxation proposed, or as it may have a bearing on the interests, the ease, and happiness of the Amer-tillation will probably be increased to twentyican people; and as I have reason to believe that my object in offering the amendment to the Committee of the Whole was not fully understood, I hope the House will indulge me by going again into the Committee of the Whole, in order that the subject, now better understood, may there be discussed.

Mr. Speaker, the Committee of Ways and Means propose by their report to raise by internal, direct, and indirect taxes the sum of four million seven hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars, as follows:

On licenses to distil spirits, the sum of $275.000
On retailing licenses
On auction licenses
Excise on refined sugar
By carriage tax

eight or thirty millions of gallons. But twentyfour millions will answer my purpose; twentyfour millions, if the amendment be adopted, will yield five or six millions of dollars, and will enable us to dismiss all the other internal taxes proposed by the committee.

Mr. Speaker, we have taken a stand that cannot be receded from-a stand that will create expense; and having voted with the majority to raise armies, to equip the navy, and for a variety of other measures of a warlike aspect, I think it my duty not to refuse the means of payment. I will, therefore, not interfere with the system of 500,000 taxation proposed by the Committee of Ways 150,000 and Means, until I have first found a substitute. 200,000 I will not refuse any of the taxes they propose 150,000 until I have selected some more suitable subject 450,000 of taxation-one that will make the system operate more equally on the different sections of the 1,725,000 country, and that will be less oppressive in its - 3,000,000 operation. I do not like the system that is proposed. I think it too diffusive; that it embraces - 4.725.000 too many objects; that it will require too many officers; and that it will be unnecessarily trouble

amend it if I can; but if I cannot-if the amendment I have proposed shall not obtain-much as I dislike it, I will take it as it is. I think it my duty, under existing circumstances, to concur in raising the necessary supplies in the most eligible and least oppressive form I can obtain them.

The amendment I have proposed, of twenty-some and oppressive in its operation. I will five cents a gallon on domestic distilled spirits, may safely be relied on to produce five or six millions of dollars. This, with the other taxes agreed to by the House, will give more money than is required to be raised by the report of the committee; and with this, if the amendment be agreed to, we may dismiss all the other internal taxes proposed. The land tax, the stamp tax, and all the other internal taxes, may be dismissed, and with them the trouble, the distress, and the oppression, that must necessarily result from their imposition and collection.

Mr. Speaker, I have estimated the product of the tax of twenty-five cents per gallon on domestic distilled spirits at five or six millions of dollars. The quantity distilled the last year appears, by returns made by marshals, pursuant to a resolution of Congress, to be a small fraction under twenty-four millions of gallons. From those data gentlemen will be able to calculate for themselves, and satisfy themselves of the correctness of my estimate. But I have referred to a document that I believe has never been laid before the House: the return of domestic manufactures, made by the marshals, at an early period of the present session. This return was made to the Secretary of the Treasury, and by him transmitted to the Committee of Commerce and Manufactures. It was examined by the members of that committee, and by several other members of this House. I think I have stated the quantity of these spirits truly; but if not, I hope some gen

Mr. Speaker, the tax I propose is said to be odious, because it is an excise. True, it is odious; and all other internal taxes are odious, and nearly equally odious, whether they be in the nature of an excise, or in any other form. But will a tax of twenty-five cents per gallon on domestic spirits be more odious than an excise on refined sugar? Will it be more odious than a stamp tax, or a land tax, or any other of the internal taxes, proposed by the committee? I think not. And by the adoption of this, we may dismiss all the others; by the adoption of this, we may strike off fivesixths of them, and about five-sixths of all the trouble, vexation, distress, and oppression, they will produce. I beg gentlemen to look at this, and compare the operation of the system, amended as I have proposed, with what it will be in its present form. In its present form, a multitude of legal provisions must be consulted and obeyed. You must be watched and controlled in the management of your concerns, and many will be dunned, executed, and perplexed, by a swarm of officers, that must be appointed to carry the system into effect, and a vast patronage will be created, that one day or another may be dangerous to the liberties of the country. If the amend

use; you can scarcely enter a house, where you may not get a glass of spirits. It is therefore a fit subject of revenue; and when we are obliged to resort to internal taxes, I can see no reason why this article should be exempt from the common fate of other luxuries.

Mr. Speaker, the heavy additional duty which our Western friends have enabled us to impose on foreign spirits, will act as a bounty on home distillation. The more we embarrass the importation of foreign spirits by taxation, the more we encourage the home distillation; and I do think our Western brethren ought to bear a similar burden to that they have voted to impose on other sections of the country.

H. of R.

not greater than the amount of duty on the quantity of spirits they severally consume, which cannot be much.

Mr. Speaker, I am inclined to an opinion, that it would, among the less wealthy part of the community, be a family of some little extravagance that would use more than one barrel of this spirit in a year. The tax on that quantity, at twentyfive cents, as proposed, will be seven dollars and fifty cents; but it is probable that more than fifteen gallons a year would not be consumed by a common-sized family of sober habits-and if they be not sober, no care of ours can save them from difficulties. The duty on fifteen gallons will be three dollars and seventy-five cents; wealthy famMr. Speaker, I think the Western section of the ilies, if they use more of the article, have more country has less reason to refuse a fair participa- abundant means to pay; the rich are never in distion in the taxes to be raised, than any other sec- tress in this way: if it is oppressive to any part of tion of the Union, because they will derive more the community, it will be so to the poorer classes of benefit, probably, from the expenditure of the tax society. But neither seven dollars and fifty cents, than any other. The Army of the United States nor three dollars and seventy-five cents, to a famhas been for years pist almost exclusively within ily, can be considered as a burdensome contributhe reach of their market. They have enjoyed, tion for the support of Government. The rights and will enjoy, the benefit of the soldiers' pay and interest of the American people must, indeed, expended among them, and the benefit of a mar-be estimated at a low rate by that man who would ket for their provisions, their whiskey and other not cheerfully pay either of these sums for their articles, to supply the Army which the tax is in- defence. tended to support; and I did expect that they would not have refused to suffer their whiskey to bear a part of the tax.

Mr. Speaker, my honorable friend from Pennsylvania, (Mr. SMILIE,) the correctness of whose political course I have had so many occasions to admire and respect, considers a tax on domestic distilled spirits an odious tax, because it is an excise, and he has taken the trouble to quote Blackstone at considerable length, to prove that it is odious and oppressive. The gentleman might have spared this trouble-it was not necessary to invoke foreign aid on this subject; we all know that it is odious; we have all had the experience of an excise at home; and of a stamp tax, and of all the other internal taxes now proposed to be laid. We know that they were all odious, and that they were all oppressive; and this knowledge makes me wish to reduce their number, to diminish their odium, and as far as possible avert the oppression; for the odium and oppression will be nearly in proportion to the number of taxes embraced by the system.

Mr. Speaker, I have thought it my duty to submit these observations to the consideration of the House. I think the amendment I had the honor to move, important in the bearing it will have on the ease and comfort of individuals, and on the prosperity of the nation.

Mr. FINDLEY had no intention to detain this House by a reply to all the observations made by the honorable mover and the supporter of the motion, (Messrs. McKIM and WRIGHT,) because he presumed the principal effect these observations would have on the majority of the House, would be to convince them that the gentlemen themselves did not understand the subject. The resolution appeared highly objectionable on several grounds. It proposed to introduce the principle of excise with its host of officers, and which always has been and always will be a fertile source of perjury and frauds. It was so in this country during the small trial that was made of it, notwithstanding all the care of Government, and the numerous amendments from time to time made by Congress. In Britain it is well known Mr. Speaker, let us see what it is, in this tax that oaths respecting excises acquire no confion home distillation, that is so odious and oppres-dence either with the Government, or with the sive-the people generally will have nothing to people. They have sometimes locked the distil do with it, they will neither see nor feel its opera-lers out of the still-houses, and sometimes locked tion in any other way than in the price of the them in for times prescribed, and they have apspirits they consume. The distiller pays the en- pointed officers to watch other officers, and itinetire tax, and recovers it back in the sale of his rant officers to watch all the others at uncertain liquor. It will give the distillers some trouble, times; but all does not do. No law can make and we may suffer some abuse in the collection; officers honest where the temptations are so but I see no necessity for more trouble and abuse great, and the security depends only on oaths. in this, than in the sugar excise, the land tax, or Mr. F. appealed to the reports of the committee almost any of the other taxes proposed; and this of Parliament on that subject. He added, that being much more productive than all the others as in Britain excises were levied on a vast varitogether, is on that account entitled to our prefer-ety of subjects, and under perpetual appropriaence. The people at large can only be affected tions to the support of the public debt, they could by this tax, in a pecuniary way, in an amount not be repealed. When the experiment was

made in this country the excise was spread over but few objects. On the snuff the frauds were such as made it a certain loss to the revenue; therefore it was first postponed and afterwards repealed, and as soon as the excise on distilled spirits was released from the appropriations by the abundance of other revenues, it was also repealed after a fair experiment had been made; and he was confident that Congress would not now introduce that fertile source of corruption and discontent with respect to only a single item of the proposed taxes.

MARCH, 1812.

it will be made would sell for about one-half that amount; and, estimating from the amount of the former direct tax, is about ten times as much as by the proposed direct tax will be charged on his whole plantation and stock. This he thought was both unjust and impolitic. It would be much better policy to charge it directly on the rye received by the distiller, at a proper estimate of what the bushels of rye would produce. This would be much more simple and certain, than charging it on the spirits distilled, by hired stillers, and which might easily be much of it disposed of without the knowledge of the owner, even if he was so honest as not to connive at it. Much might be said against the impolicy of oppressing, if not destroying, a domestic manufacture so essentially connected with agriculture, it being the only method by which farmers, at a very inconvenient distance from market, can reduce their grain to such a portable form as to be the more easily carried to a distance. The attempt to do so is the more extraordinary at a time when every other manufacture is encouraged. But the honorable mover proposes to promote morality by rendering it more difficult to get drunk. Mr. F. said that if there were no spirits distilled from the produce of the farm, there are other beverages by the use of which people might and often did get drunk. The drunkard would have his drink. But not to detain the House further, he would assure the honorable mover that his estimated millions for the amount of the rev

The opposition made on a former occasion to the excise on distilled spirits in a part of the two of the western counties in Pennsylvania has been brought into view by an honorable gentleman, with a view to give an impression as if in that place only it was disapproved of; but this was not the case. When President WASHINGTON was at Carlisle, where the right wing of the Army was on their march to the westward to suppress this opposition to the excise, Mr. F. said, that though there had been then no disturbance in the county in which he resided, yet another messenger and himself were sent with assurances to the President that the opposition was then in so great a measure suppressed, that the further march of the Army would not be necessary. The President, after expressing his regret that these assurances had not been given before the Army was rendezvoused, said that he knew that so great an army was not necessary for that object, but that there were great symptoms of dis-enue thus to be obtained would vanish; if the resocontent not only in other parts of that State but in Maryland, which were in danger of spreading still further. That on this account he had thought it his duty to call forth so great a force as not only to convince those who had given the disturbance, but all parts of the United States, that the citizens would, when called upon, turn out in support of the execution of their laws. Mr. F. said that the honorable member from Maryland who moved and supported the resolution will recollect, that about that time there were some disturbances in that State on the account of the excise. It was well known at that day that the patriotic army who marched on that occasion generally, when opportunity offered, declared their disapprobation of the excise system, but at the same time their abhorrence of an unconstitutional opposition to a Constitutional law. It is also well known that the repeal of the excise gave general satisfaction, while at the same time many thought the repeal of several other taxes that did not depend on the excise system improper.

lution takes effect, he would put in no more rye than would be sufficient to feed his horses. He would not pay one hundred dollars of a tax on the produce of eight or ten acres of rye; and he would not be alone, it would be general. Being confident that the House will not suffer the welldigested system proposed by the Committee of Ways and Means to be contaminated by the corrupting systems of excise, nor a tax so unjust and deceptive to make a part of the system, he would enlarge no further.

Mr. GRUNDY.-Mr. Speaker: On the present motion to recommit so much of the report of the Committee of Ways and Means as respects the resolution immediately before us, in order to examine the amendment offered by the gentleman from Maryland, (Mr. McKIM,) I doubted the propriety of entering into the merits of that proposition, and therefore took no part in the discussion on yesterday; but from the course the debate has taken, I do not know that a more favorable opportunity will offer to express my views of this subject, not only in relation to the tax Mr. F. said that though this was the greatest, proposed by the gentleman from Maryland, but it was not the only objection to the resolution. also in reference to the entire report of the ComIt was, besides this, unjust, impolitic, and decep-mittee of Ways and Means. The honorable memtious-it was, in fact, a tax directly on agriculture-it was a tax on their rye-fields. By a letter on his table, just received, he was informed that his family had sold as much rye to the distillers as, with what will be distilled for his own family use, would produce by the proposed excise one hundred dollars tax, whereas the rye of which

ber from Maryland proposes to impose an excise of twenty-five cents per gallon on all spirits distilled from domestic materials (fruit excepted) within the United States. To this change in the plan of taxation digested by the Committee of Ways and Means, I have objections, not bottomed on the honest prejudices of the people