It has been asked, as if some cunning was detected, why if the money received in the Treasury to pay the drawbacks is equal to the proposed bounties, a further appropriation should be made? This cunning question admits of several very simple answers.
The bill being for seven years, the average product is the proper sum to be calculated. But the three first years may fall short of the bounties, say two thousand dollars a year, which is six thousand dollars.
The four last may exceed two thousand dollars, say eight thousand dollars.
Shall a poor fisherman wait for the whole, or if he takes his part according to the money in the Treasury—for a twenty-fourth part of the bounty on his vessel, from 1792 to 1795?
2d. This delay would happen after a bad year, the very time when he would most need prompt pay.
3d. But fish taken this year will not be exported till December next. Therefore the money will not be stopped by the drawback as the law stands, till six months after.
A substitute has been proposed for the clause, to appropriate the drawback only.
This is absolutely improper. For the ten cents allowed as drawback is but a part of the duty paid on salt. It is not easy to see any reason why a part stopped at the Treasury should be equal to the whole paid there long before. The drawback falls near nine thousand dollars short of the salt duty received by the Government. The expense of the drawback would be very heavy and useless.
Nor may gentlemen apprehend that Government, by paying next December, will advance money to the fishery. The salt duty will have been paid, and Government will have the use of the money many months before the fishermen will have a right to call for the bounties.
It is left to the candor of the gentlemen who have urged this objection, whether a better or further answer is desired.