The Executive urged them on. Dallas began by sending to Calhoun, the chairman of the Committee on Currency, a plan for a national bank with a capital of thirty-five millions and power to increase it to fifty millions; with twenty-five directors, five of whom were to be appointed by the government to represent its share in the bank stock, of which the government was to subscribe one fifth.[124]
In another report, dated Feb. 12, 1816, Dallas recommended a protective tariff and sketched its details. Upon cotton fabrics he proposed a duty of thirty-three and one half per cent on their value; on woollens, twenty-eight per cent; on linen, hemp, and silk, twenty per cent; on paper, leather, etc., thirty-five per cent; on earthenware, glassware, etc., thirty per cent; on bar-iron, seventy-five cents per hundred weight; on rolled iron, a dollar and a half; and on unenumerated articles, fifteen per cent. These duties were avowedly protective, intended to serve as the foundation of a system, and to perpetuate the policy to which the Government stood pledged by its legislation for the last six years. In connection with a proposed reduction of internal taxes, the Bank and the Tariff covered the financial field.
The House first grappled with the subject of revenue. The Committee of Ways and Means, through William Lowndes, reported, Jan. 9, 1816, a scheme embodied in twelve Resolutions intended to serve as the guide to definite legislation. Lowndes assumed a net annual revenue of $25,369,000; and to obtain this sum he proposed to shift the burden of about seven million dollars from internal taxation to the customs, by an addition of forty-two per cent to the rates of permanent duty.[125] The direct tax was to be retained to the amount of three million dollars, and an annual fund of $13,500,000 was to be set aside for the interest and principal of the national debt.
Hardly had the debate begun when Randolph, January 16, dragged the question of a protective system into the prominence it was thenceforward to maintain. Two years of repose had singularly improved his skill in the choice of language and in the instigation of class against class.
“The manufacturer,” said he,[126] “is the citizen of no place or any place; the agriculturist has his property, his lands, his all, his household Gods to defend,—and like that meek drudge the ox, who does the labor and ploughs the ground, then for his reward takes the refuse of the farm-yard, the blighted blades and the mouldy straw, and the mildewed shocks of corn for his support.... Alert, vigilant, enterprising, and active, the manufacturing interest are collected in masses, and ready to associate at a moment’s warning for any purpose of general interest to their body. Do but ring the fire-bell, and you can assemble all the manufacturing interest of Philadelphia in fifteen minutes. Nay, for the matter of that they are always assembled; they are always on the Rialto, and Shylock and Antonio meet there every day as friends, and compare notes, and possess in trick and intelligence what, in the goodness of God to them, the others can never possess.”
Randolph’s political sagacity was nowhere better shown than in replying, Jan. 31, 1816, to a speech of Calhoun: “On whom do your impost duties bear?” he asked.[127] “Upon whom bears the duty on coarse woollens and linens and blankets, upon salt, and all the necessaries of life? On poor men, and on slaveholders.” With a perception abnormally keen, Randolph fixed on the tariff and the slaveholders as the necessary combination to oppose the nationalizing efforts of Calhoun and Clay.
No leader of note supported Randolph. He stood alone, or with only the support of Stanford, as far as concerned debate; but he led nearly half the House. Upon Benjamin Hardin’s motion, February 3, to repeal the direct tax immediately and altogether, a motion which struck at the root of Dallas’s scheme, the House decided by eighty-one votes against seventy-three to sustain the secretary. On the passage of the bill to continue the direct tax of three million dollars for one year, the minority lacked but a change of three votes to defeat it. The bill passed, March 4, by a vote of sixty-seven to sixty-three.
On the tariff the House was more closely divided. The Committee of Ways and Means consisted of seven members. Lowndes was chairman. Three other members were from the South, one of whom, Robertson of Louisiana, wished protection for sugar. Three members were from the North, one of whom, Ingham of Pennsylvania, represented Dallas’s views. The chief question concerned the duty on cottons and woollens. So close was the division that Ingham, to use his own words, was struck dumb with astonishment when the committee, after adopting a duty of fifty-six per cent for the protection of sugar, voted to impose a duty of only twenty per cent on cottons and woollens. “It was, however, too glaringly inconsistent and palpably wrong to be persisted in, and therefore it was that the Committee of Ways and Means, upon reconsideration, substituted the twenty-five per cent which was reported in the bill.”[128]
When the bill came before the House, Clay moved, March 21, to substitute the rate of thirty-three and one third per cent for that of twenty-five per cent on cottons, for the express purpose of testing the sense of the House. Clay and the Northern protectionists held that the committee’s bill did not afford protection enough. The committee, also admitting the propriety of protection, maintained that twenty-five per cent was sufficient. On both sides some temper was shown, and charges of sectionalism were made. By a vote of sixty-eight to sixty-one, the House in committee voted, March 22, to impose a duty of thirty per cent. Daniel Webster then moved to limit this rate to two years, after which the duty should be twenty-five per cent for two years more, when it should be reduced to twenty per cent. Finally the House adopted a duty of twenty-five per cent for three years. Webster also carried, March 27, a motion to reduce the proposed duty on bar-iron from seventy-five to forty-five cents a hundred weight.
All the members of note, except Randolph, professed to favor protection. Calhoun was as decided as Ingham. “He believed the policy of the country required protection to our manufacturing establishments.”[129] The bill was assumed to offer protection enough, and the House disputed only whether the adopted duties were or were not sufficient. The actual free-trade sentiment was shown, April 8, when Randolph made a final motion to postpone, and was beaten by a vote of ninety-five to forty-seven.