I have faith, and it is my earnest hope, that the march of an enlightened civilization and the progress of human freedom will proceed until God’s great family shall everywhere enjoy the products of their own labor and the blessings of civil, political, and religious liberty.
The colored man was loyal to Virginia in all the days of conflict and devastation which came of the heroic struggle in the war of sections that made her fields historic. By no act of his was either the clash of arms provoked or freedom secured. He did not solve his duty by consideration of self-interest.
Speech of Hon. Justin S. Morrill, of Vermont,
(Author of the Tariff Bill of 1861), delivered in the Senate of the United Stales, December 8, 1881, on the Bill to Appoint a Tariff Commission.
The Senate, being as in Committee of the Whole, and having under consideration the bill (S. No. 22) to provide for the appointment of a commission to investigate the question of the tariff and internal revenue laws—
Mr. Morrill said: I have brought this subject to the early attention of the Senate because, if early legislative action on the tariff is to be had, obviously the measure proposed by Senator Eaton and passed at the last session of the Senate is a wise and indispensable preliminary, which cannot be started too soon. The essential information needed concerns important interests, vast in number and overspreading every nook and corner of our country; and when made available by the ingathering and collocation of all the related facts, will secure the earliest attention of Congress, as well as the trust and confidence of the country, and save the appropriate committees of both Houses weeks and months of irksome labor—possibly save them also from some blunders and from final defeat.
An enlargement of the free list, essential reductions and readjustments of rates, are to be fully considered, and some errors of conflicting codifications corrected.
If a general revision of the Bible seems to have been called for, it is hardly to be wondered at that some revision of our revenue laws should be invited. But changes in the framework of a law that has had more of stability than any other of its kind in our history, and from which an unexampled growth of varied industries has risen up, should be made with much circumspection, after deliberate consideration, by just and friendly hands, and not by ill-informed and reckless revolutionists. When our recent great army was disbanded, war taxes were also largely dismissed, and we have now, and certainly shall have hereafter, no unlimited margin for slashing experiments.
THE TARIFF OF 1861.
The tariff act of 1861, which, by a nickname given by baffled opponents as an echo to a name so humble as my own, it was perhaps hoped to render odious, was yet approved by a democratic President and gave to Mr. Buchanan a much needed opportunity to perform at last one official act approved by the people.