Duties on Stamps.
The proposition of Mr. Gallatin for admitting of a composition from the banks in lieu of the tax, came next under consideration—the blank in which was moved to be filled with one per cent.; when
Mr. W. Smith said, if the gentleman from Pennsylvania was right in his calculation yesterday, the whole amount of duties arising from the banks would be $8,000 a year, and therefore they ought not to go farther in fixing the composition, whereas one per cent., according to the same statement, will produce more than double that sum; for, if the whole capital of the banks in the United States be twenty millions, and their average dividend ten per cent., that will produce two millions, which at one per cent. will give $20,000. He therefore moved, in order to bring the matter nearer to a fair equivalent, to strike out one per cent. and insert one-half per cent.
Mr. Nicholas said what the duty would produce was uncertain; they could with more correctness say, that one per cent. was a reasonable composition on the dividends, than what might be produced by the duty. He knew of no tax laid upon property that could be made for less than five per cent. to clear the expense of making it.
Mr. W. Smith thought they should first fix the rates to be paid on bank notes before they determined upon the composition.
Mr. Gallatin said, when the rates were before under consideration, the gentleman from South Carolina objected to it, because, if fixed too high, he said it would influence the composition. He therefore moved to have it struck out; but now, when a composition was under consideration, he turns round and says it would be better first to fix the rates. He thought one per cent. a reasonable composition, and that it would be best first to fix that.
Mr. Smith denied that he wanted first to fix the composition; it was his wish to strike out the rates, to reduce them, that he moved to leave the sum blank.
The question was put and carried, there being 54 votes in favor of it.
Mr. Gallatin then renewed his motion for fixing the scale of duty to be paid on bank notes. It was, on notes not exceeding fifty dollars, three cents for every five dollars; those not exceeding one hundred dollars, fifty cents; those above one hundred dollars, and not exceeding five hundred dollars, one dollar; for all above five hundred dollars, two dollars.
Mr. Dayton said there were many notes under five dollars, for which there was no provision.