He recognizes the fact fully that he is one of a great body of men, each one of whom is charged with interests of an important character to their state or district, and many heavily weighted with special and peculiar measures of national importance. These must all have their opportunity. Less than ninety working-days usually comprise the session, and there are but four of these in a congress,—from March to adjournment, and from December to March, and then repeated, constitutes a congressional term, with eight of them in a presidential term, or two a year for the four years. Beside, it takes so long a time to get measures through congress that the successful man finds it necessary to devote himself with great carefulness to the few measures of importance he would have adopted, and become law organic or otherwise.
Very soon after Mr. Blaine entered congress he presented a resolution instructing the Committee on Judiciary to inquire into the expediency of amending the constitution so as to allow congress to levy an export tax. But the session closed, and it is not reported, and now his second session is closing, and still it is not forthcoming. Why not? He will know the reason why! And so there comes a day near the session’s close, only the day before Mr. Lincoln’s second inauguration, when he arises and states “a little grievance.” He states the resolution, its being offered at the last session, and now again at the present session. It had been to the Ways and Means Committee, to which it had been transferred. Evidently he had been ready to grapple with the subject for some time, and proceeded to do so. It involved an amendment to the constitution, and one “essential to the financial success of the government, and to the agricultural, commercial, and manufacturing prosperity of the country in all future time.”
It was stated that the measure would have been presented by the committee, if they had supposed time would have permitted of its consideration. It presented a subject that was discussed at length in the Convention of 1787. The “Madison Papers” give a synopsis of the constitutional debates of that convention, and show that many of the strongest men of that body, the really far-sighted ones, opposed the insertion of the clause prohibiting a tax on exports. The vote was not a very decisive one, nor did its advocacy come from the Southern or “staple states,” and opposition from Northern states.
He proceeds to deliver what is his great speech, if not the great speech of the session. It was probably not over an hour long, but he had not proceeded far before it became apparent that he had thoroughly studied the subject, and was investing it with a new interest.
A great debt of more than two billion eight hundred million was on the nation. Mr. Blaine’s amendment was looking towards its liquidation. It was the wise, strong look far ahead. He saw in it several hundred millions of revenue in the export of cotton, tobacco, and naval stores, without affecting the demand for them, and also in petroleum, and numberless articles, still more of revenue. France was taxing her wines and brandies, and countries having peculiar commodities taxed them.
Cotton which sold in Liverpool at eleven and three-quarters pence per pound in December, 1861, sold for twenty-four and one-half pence per pound in just one year from that date. The three million two hundred thousand bales of five hundred pounds each, this country had exported, were missed there.
“Whoever as secretary of the treasury shall undertake and succeed in paying the debt,” he argues in closing, “must have open to him the three great avenues of taxation, namely, the tariff, the excise system, and the duties on exports, and must be empowered to use each in its appropriate place, by congressional legislation.”
And so he closed the first half of his second congressional year, with the same policy of questions with which he began, aiming still at thoroughness and mastery, still the guiding stars of his history, the moulding powers and the prominent features of his great career.
