SALT TAX: MR. BENTON'S FOURTH SPEECH AGAINST IT.

The amount which this tax brings into the treasury is about 600,000 dollars, and that upon an article costing about 650,000 dollars; and one-half of the tax received goes to the fishing bounties and allowances founded upon it. So that what upon the record is a tax of about 100 per centum, is in the reality a tax of 200 per centum; and that upon an article of prime necessity and universal use, while we have articles of luxury and superfluity—wines, silks—either free of tax, or nominally taxed at some ten or twenty per centum. The bare statement of the case is revolting and mortifying; but it is only by looking into the detail of the tax—its amount upon different varieties of salt—its effect upon the trade and sale of the article—upon its importation and use—and the consequences upon the agriculture of the country, for want of adequate supplies of salt—that the weight of the tax, and the disastrous effects of its imposition, can be ascertained. To enable the Senate to judge of these effects and consequences, and to render my remarks more intelligible, I will read a table of the importation of salt for the year 1835—the last that has been made up—and which is known to be a fair index to the annual importations for many years past. With the number of bushels, and the name of the country from which the importations come, will be given the value of each parcel at the place it was obtained, and the original cost per bushel.

Statement of the quantity of Salt imported into the United States during the year 1835, with the value and cost thereof, per bushel, at the place from which it was imported:

No. of Cost
Countries.bushels. p. bus.
Sweden and Norway,8,556$572 6 3-4
Swedish West Indies,6,856708 10 1-4
Danish West Indies,2,351386 16
Dutch West Indies,141,56612,967 9
England,2,613,077412,507 16 1-2
Ireland,51,95412,276
Gibraltar,17,8321,385 7 3-4
Malta,1,500118 7 3-4
British West Indies,959,78698,497 10
British Am. Colonies,138,59330,374
France on Mediterranean,32,6482,155 6 2-3
Spain on Atlantic,360,14016,760 4 3-4
Spain on Mediterran.,101,0005,443 5 1-3
Portugal,780,00055,087 7
Cape de Verd Islands,8,134751 9 1-10
Italy,36,7421,580 4 1-3
Sicily,5,786156 2 2-3
Trieste,7,888255 3 7-8
Turkey,9,377984 10 1-10
Colombia,17,1621,227
Brazil,25068
Argentine Republic,40241
Africa,5,733615 10 2-3
5,735,364655,000

Mr. B. would remark that salt, being brought in ballast, the greatest quantity came from England, where we had the largest trade; and that its importation, with a tax upon it, being merely incidental to trade, this greatest quantity came from the place where it cost most, and was of far inferior kind. The salt from England was nearly one half of the whole quantity imported; its cost was about sixteen cents a bushel; and its quality was so inferior that neither in the United States, nor in Great Britain, could it be used for curing provisions, fish, butter, or any thing that required long keeping, or exposure to southern heats. This was the salt commonly called Liverpool. It was made by artificial heat, and never was, and never can be made pure, as the mere agitation of the boiling prevents the separation of the bittern, and other foreign and poisonous ingredients with which all salt water, and even mineral salt, is more or less impregnated. The other half of the imported salt costs far less than the English salt, and is infinitely superior to it; so far superior that the English salt will not even serve for a substitute in the important business of curing fish, and flesh, for long keeping, or southern exposure. This salt was made by the action of the sun in the latitudes approaching, and under the tropics. We begin to obtain it in the West Indies, and in large quantity on Turk's Island; and get it from all the islands and coasts, under the sun's track, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Black Sea. The Cape de Verd Islands, the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts of Spain and Portugal, the Mediterranean coast of France, the two coasts of Italy, the islands in the Mediterranean, the coasts of the Adriatic, the Archipelago, up to the Black Sea, all produce it and send it to us. The table which has been read shows that the original cost of this salt—the purest and strongest in the world—is about nine or ten cents a bushel in the Gulf of Mexico; five, six and seven cents on the coasts of France, Spain and Portugal; three and four cents in Italy and the Adriatic; and less than three cents in Sicily. Yet all this salt bears one uniform duty; it was all twenty cents a bushel, and is now near ten cents a bushel; so that while the tax on the English salt is a little upwards of fifty per cent. on the value, the same tax on all the other salt is from one hundred to two hundred, and three hundred and near four hundred per cent. The sun-made salt is chiefly used in the Great West, in curing provisions; the Liverpool is chiefly used on the Atlantic coasts; and thus the people in different sections of the Union pay different degrees of tax upon the same articles, and that which costs least is taxed most. A tax ranging to some hundred per cent. is in itself an enormous tax; and thus the duty collected by the federal government from all the consumers of the sun-made salt, is in itself excessive; amounting, in many instances, to double, treble, or even quadruple the original cost of the article. This is an enormity of taxation which strikes the mind at the first blush; but, it is only the beginning of the enormity, the extent of which is only discoverable in tracing its effects to all their diversified and injurious consequences. In the first place, it checks and prevents the importation of the salt. Coming as ballast, and not as an article of commerce on which profit is to be made, the shipper cannot bring it except he is supplied with money to pay the duty, or surrenders it into the hands of salt dealers, on landing, to go his security for the payment of the duty. Thus, the importation of the article is itself checked; and this check operates with the greatest force in all cases where the original price of the salt was least; and, therefore, where it operates most injuriously to the country. In all such cases the tax operates as a prohibition to use salt as ballast, and checks its importation from all the places of its production nearest the sun's track, from the Gulf of Mexico to Constantinople. In the next place, the imposition of the tax throws the salt into the hands of an intermediate set of dealers in the seaports, who either advance the duty, or go security for it, and who thus become possessed of nearly all the salt which is imported. A few persons employed in this business engross the salt, and fix the price for all in the market; and fix it higher or lower, not according to the cost of the article, but according to the necessities of the country, and the quantity on hand, and the season of the year. The prices at which they fix it are known to all purchasers, and may be seen in all prices-current. It is generally, in the case of alum salt, four, five, ten, or fifteen times as much as it cost. It is generally forty, or fifty, or sixty cents a bushel, and nearly the same price for all sorts, without any reference to the original cost, whether it cost three cents, or five cents, or ten cents, or fifteen cents a bushel. About one uniform price is put on the whole, and the purchaser has to submit to the imposition. This results from the effect of the tax, throwing the article, which is nothing but ballast, into the hands of salt dealers. The importer does not bring more money than the salt is worth, to pay the duty; he does not come prepared to pay a heavy duty on his ballast; he has to depend upon raising the money for paying the duty after he arrives in the United States; and this throws him into the hands of the salt dealer, and subjects the country purchaser to all the fair charges attending this change of hands, and this establishment of an intermediate dealer, who must have his profits; and also to all the additional exactions which he may choose to make. This should not be. There should be no costs, nor charges, nor intermediate profits, on such an article as salt. It comes as ballast; as ballast it should be handed out—should be handed from the ship to the steamboat—should escape port charges, and intermediate profits—and this would be the case, if the duty was abolished. Thus the charges, costs, profits, and exactions, in consequence of the tax, are greater than the tax itself! But this is not all—a further injury, resulting from the tax, is yet to be inflicted upon the consumer. It is well known that the measured bushel of alum salt, and all sun-made salt is alum salt—it is well known that a bushel of this salt weighs about eighty-four pounds; yet the custom-house bushel goes by weight, and not by measure, and fifty-six pounds is there the bushel. Thus the consumer, in consequence of having the salt sent through the custom-house, is shifted from the measured to the weighed bushel, and loses twenty-eight pounds by the operation! but this is not his whole loss; the intermediate salt dealer deducts six pounds more, and gives fifty pounds for the bushel; and thus this taxed and custom-housed article, after paying some hundred per cent. to the government and several hundred per cent. more to the regraters, is worked into a loss of thirty-four pounds on every bushel! All these losses and impositions would vanish, if salt was freed from the necessity of passing the custom-houses; and to do that, it must be freed in toto from taxation. The slightest duty would operate nearly the whole mischief, for it would throw the article into the hands of regraters, and would substitute the weighed for the measured bushel.

Such are the direct injuries of the salt tax; a tax enormous in itself, disproportionate in its application to the same article in different parts of the Union, and bearing hardest upon that kind which is cheapest, best, and most indispensable. The levy to the government is enormous, $650,000 per annum upon an article only worth about $600,000; but what the government receives is a trifle, compared to what is exacted by the regrater,—what is lost in the difference between the weighed and the measured bushel,—and the loss which the farmer sustains for want of adequate supplies of salt for his stock, and their food. Assuming the government tax to be ten cents a bushel, the average cost of alum salt to be seven cents, and the regrater's price to be fifty cents, and it is clear that he receives upwards of three times as much as the government does; and that the tribute to those regraters is near two millions of dollars per annum. Assuming again that thirty-four pounds in the bushel are lost to the consumer in the substitution of the weighed for the measured bushel, and here is another loss amounting to nearly three-eighths of the value of the salt; that is to say, to about $250,000 on an importation of $650,000 worth.

These detailed views of the operation and effects of the salt duty, continued Mr. B., place the burdens of that tax in the most odious and revolting light; but the picture is not yet complete; two other features are to be introduced into it, each of which, separately, and still more, both put together, go far to double its enormity, and to carry the iniquity of such a tax up to the very verge of criminality and sinfulness. The first of these features is, in the loss which the farmers sustain for want of adequate supplies of salt for their stock; and the second, from the fact that the duty is a one-sided tax, being imposed only on some sections of the Union, and not at all upon another section of the Union. A few details will verify these additional features. First, as to the loss which the country sustains for want of adequate supplies of salt. Every practical man knows that every description of stock requires salt—hogs, horses, cattle, sheep; and that all the prepared food of cattle requires it also—hay, fodder, clover, shucks, &c. In England it is ascertained, by experience, that sheep require, each, half a pound a week, which is twenty-eight pounds, or half a custom-house bushel, per annum; cows require a bushel and a half per annum; young cattle a bushel; draught horses, and draught cattle, a bushel; colts, and young cattle, from three pecks to a bushel each, per annum; and it was computed in England, before the abolition of the salt-tax there, that the stock of the English farmers, for want of adequate supplies of salt, was injured to an annual amount far beyond the product of the tax.

Dr. Young, before a committee of the British House of Commons, and upon oath, testified to his belief that the use of salt free of tax would benefit the agricultural interest, in the increased value of their stock alone, to the annual amount of three millions sterling, near fifteen millions of dollars. Such was the injury of the salt-tax in England to the agricultural interest in the single article of stock. What the injury might be to the agricultural interest in the United States on the same article, on account of the stinted use of salt occasioned by the tax, might be vaguely conceived from general observation and a few established facts. In the first place, it was known to every body that stock in our country was stinted for salt; that neither hogs, horses, cattle, or sheep, received any thing near the quantity found by experience to be necessary in England; and, as for their food, that little or no salt was put upon it in the United States; while in England, ten or fifteen pounds of salt to the ton of hay, clover, &c. was used in curing it. Taking a single branch of the stock of the United States, that of sheep, and more decided evidence of the deplorable deficiency of salt cannot be produced. The sheep in the United States were computed by the wool-growers, in 1832, in their petitions to Congress, at twenty millions; this number, at half a bushel each, would require about ten millions of bushels; now the whole supply of salt in the United States, both home-made and imported, barely exceeds ten millions; so that, if the sheep received an adequate supply, there would not remain a pound for any other purpose! Of course, the sheep did not receive an adequate supply, nor perhaps the fourth part of what was necessary; and so of all other stock. To give an opinion of the total loss to the agricultural interest in the United States for want of the free use of this article, would require the minute, comprehensive, sagacious, and peculiar turn of mind of Dr. Young; but it may be sufficient for the argument, and for all practical purposes, to assume that our loss, in proportion to the number of our stock, is greater than that of the English farmers, and amounts to fifteen or twenty times the value of the tax itself!