American politics (non-partisan) from the beginning to date

by Thomas V. Cooper; Hector T. Fenton

The Tariff Speech of Samuel J. Randall.

Delivered in the House of Representatives, May 18, 1888.

He opened by referring to the President’s recent message, in which the Executive advised Congress that the surplus in the Treasury by the 30th of June, at the end of the current fiscal year, would be expected to reach the sum of $140,000,000, including prior accumulations; or more closely stated, the sum of $113,000,000, apart from prior accumulations, over and above all authorized expenditures, including the sinking fund for the current year.

He then quoted from the President’s message defining his position on the tariff and internal revenue questions, and said that, from the utterances of the President, he understands the Executive to be adverse to any reduction of the internal taxes, as that mode of taxation afforded, in the opinion of the President, “no just complaint, and that nothing is so well able to bear the burden without hardship to any portion of the people.”

The President further said that the tariff law was a vicious and illegal source of inequitable tax, and ought to be revised and modified, and the President had urged upon Congress the immediate consideration of this matter to the exclusion of all others. The President had asserted in substance that the reduction necessary should be made by additions to the free list, and by the lowering of the rates of duty.

In the presence of such language, emanating from the Executive, authorized by the direction of the Constitution to communicate and from time to time give to Congress information on the state of the Union, and recommend such measures as he should judge necessary, it was imperatively required of the representatives of the people to give fair, intelligent, and prompt attention to the suggestions made. He had done so.

He had introduced and had referred to the Committee on Ways and Means a bill to reduce and equalize duties on imports and to reduce the internal revenue taxes, and some provisions of that bill showed that the remedies he would apply were at variance with those recommended by the President. The President sought to prevent the continuation of the surplus revenue by resorting to changes in the customs duties only.

The remedy he (Randall) proposed was through the repeal of internal revenue taxes as well as by a full revision of the tariff, as promised to the people by the Democratic Convention of 1884. The reduction provided for in his bill aggregated $77,000,000 on internal taxes.

Those taxes had always been the last to be levied, and the first to be repealed when no longer necessary.

Jefferson had given the death-blow to excise taxes, that most vicious of all taxes, and among the things he received the thanks of the Legislature of his native State for doing, was for having the internal taxes abolished. The first tax also to be repealed after the War of 1812 had been the excise tax, which was recommended by Madison, and was the first law enacted under the administration of Monroe. The Democratic Convention of 1884 declared that internal revenue was a war tax, and this declaration, taken in connection with the other declarations of the platform, clearly established the fact that the opinion of the Convention was that some of the internal revenue taxes should first go, and that they should all go whenever a sufficient sum was realized from custom-house taxes to meet the expenses of the Government economically administered.