A Biography of Henry Clay, the Senator from Kentucky / Containing Also, a Complete Report of All His Speeches; Selections From His Private Correspondence; Eulogies in the Senate and House; and a Poem, by George D. Prentice, Esq.

by Unknown

I will not detain the senate now by dwelling on the ruinous state of the trade with France, in silks and wines, especially, as it is now carried on. But I cannot forbear observing, that we import from France and her dependencies thirty-three millions of dollars annually, whilst we export in return only about nineteen millions, leaving a balance against us, in the whole trade, of fourteen millions of dollars; and, excluding the French dependencies, the balance against us in the direct trade, with France, is seventeen millions. Yet, gentlemen say we must not touch this trade! We must not touch a trade with such a heavy and ruinous balance against us; a balance, a large part, if not the whole, of which is paid in specie. I have been informed, and believe, that the greater part of the gold which was obtained from France under the treaty of indemnity, and which, during general Jackson’s administration, was with somuch care and parade introduced into the United States, perhaps under the vain hope that it would remain here, in less than eighteen months was reëxported to France in the very boxes in which it was brought, to liquidate our commercial debt. Yet we must not supply the indispensable wants of the treasury by taxing any of the articles of this disadvantageous commerce! And some gentlemen, assuming not merely the guardianship of the poor, but of the south also, (with about as much fidelity in the one case as in the other,) object to the imposition of duties upon these luxuries, because they might affect somewhat the trade with France in a southern staple. But duties upon any foreign imports may affect, in some small degree, our exports. If the objection, therefore, be sustained, we must forbear to lay any imposts, and rely, as some gentlemen are understood to desire, on direct taxes. But to this neither the country nor congress will ever consent. We have hitherto resorted mainly, and I have no doubt always will resort, to our foreign imports for revenue. And can any objects be selected, with more propriety, than those which enter so largely into the consumption of the opulent? It is of more consequence to the community, in the consideration of duties, who consumes the articles charged with them, and consequently, who pays them, than how the dutied articles are purchased abroad. The south is the last place from which an objection should come on the score of disproportionate consumption. I venture to assert that there is more champagne wine consumed in the Astor House, in the city of New York, in one year, than in any state south of the Potomac. [A laugh.] Our total amount of imports last year was one hundred and four millions of dollars. Deducting the free articles, the amount of goods subject to duty was probably not more than between fifty and sixty millions. Now, if we are to adhere to the compromise of the tariff, which it is my wish to be able to do, but concerning which I have remarked lately a portentous silence on the part of some of its professing friends on the other side, it will be recollected, that the maximum of any duty to be imposed is twenty per centum, after June, 1842. It would not be safe to assume our imports in future of articles that would remain for consumption, and not be reëxported, higher than one hundred millions, twenty per centum on which would yield a gross revenue annually of twenty millions. But I think that we ought not to estimate our imports at more than ninety millions; for, besides other causes that must tend to diminish them, some ten or twelve millions of our exports will be applied annually to the payment of interest or principal of our state debts held abroad, and will not return in the form of imports. Twenty per centum upon ninety millions would yield a gross revenue of eighteen millions only. Thus it is manifest, that there must be additional duties. And I think it quite certain, that the amount of necessary revenue cannot be raised without going up to the limitof the compromise upon all articles whatever, which, by its terms, are liable to duty. And these additional duties ought to be laid now, forthwith, clearly before the close of the session. The revenue is now deficient, compelling the administration to resort to the questionable and dangerous use of treasury notes. Of this deficient revenue, there will go off five millions during the next session of congress, according to the estimate of the secretary of the treasury, two and a half millions on the thirty-first of December, 1841, and two and a half millions more on the thirtieth June, 1842. This reduction takes place under that provision of the compromise act, by which one half the excess of all duties beyond twenty per centum is repealed on the last day of this year, and the other moiety of that excess on the last day of June, 1842. Now, if congress does not provide for this great deficiency in the revenue prior to the close of the present session, how is it possible to provide for it in season at the session which begins on the first Monday in December next? No great change in the customs ought to be made without reasonable notice to the merchant, to enable him to adapt his operations to the change. How is it possible to give this notice, if nothing is done until the next regular meeting of congress? Waiving all notice to the merchant, and adverting merely to the habits of congress, is it not manifest, that no revenue bill can be passed by the last day of December, at a session commencing on the first Monday of that month? How, then, can gentlemen who have, at least, the temporary possession of the government, reconcile it to duty and to patriotism, to go home and leave it in this condition? I heard the senator from Pennsylvania, (Mr. Buchanan,) at the last session, express himself in favor of a duty on wines and silks. Why is he now silent? Has he, too, changed his opinion?

[Mr. Buchanan. I have changed none of my opinions on the subject.]

I am glad, most happy, to hear it. Then the senator ought to unite with us in the imposition of duties sufficient to produce an adequate revenue. Yet his friends denounce, in advance, the idea of imposing duties on articles of luxury! They denounce distribution! They denounce an extra session, after creating an absolute necessity for it! They denounce all measures to give us a sound currency, but the sub-treasury, denounced by the people! They denounce the administration of president Harrison before it has commenced! Parting from the power, of which the people have stripped them, with regret and reluctance, and looking all around them with sullenness, they refuse to his administration that fair trial, which the laws allow to every arraigned culprit. I hope that gentlemen will reconsider this course, and that, out of deference to the choice of the people, if not from feelings of justice and propriety, they will forbear to condemn before they have heard presidentHarrison’s administration. If gentlemen are for peace and harmony, we are prepared to meet them in a spirit of peace and harmony, to unite with them in healing the wounds and building up the prosperity of the country. But if they are for war, as it seems they are, I say, ‘lay on, Macduff.’ (Sensation, and a general murmuring sound throughout the chamber and galleries.)

One argument of the honorable senator, who has just taken his seat, (Mr. Wright,) I wish to detach from the residue of his speech, that I may, at once, put it to sleep for ever. With all his well known ability, and without meaning to be disrespectful, I may add, with all his characteristic ingenuity and subtlety, he has urged, that if you distribute the proceeds of the public lands, you arrogate to yourselves the power of taxing the people to raise money for distribution among the states; that there is no difference between revenue proceeding from the public lands and revenue from the customs; and that there is nothing in the constitution which allows you to lay duties on imports for the purpose of making up a deficiency produced by distributing the proceeds of the public lands.

I deny the position, utterly deny it, and I will refute it from the express language of the constitution. From the first, I have been of those who protested against the existence of any power in this government to tax the people for the purpose of a subsequent distribution of the money among the states. I still protest against it. There exists no such power. We invoke the aid of no such power in maintenance of the principle of distribution, as applied to the proceeds of the sales of the public domain. But if such a power clearly existed, there would not be the slightest ground for the apprehension of its exercise. The imposition of taxes is always an unpleasant, sometimes a painful duty. What government will ever voluntarily incur the odium and consent to lay taxes, and become a tax-gatherer, not to have the satisfaction of expending the money itself, but to distribute it among other governments, to be expended by them? But to the constitution. Let us see whether the taxing power and the land power are, as the argument of the senator assumes, identical and the same. What is the language of the constitution? ‘The congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts, and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.’ Here is ample power to impose taxes; but the object for which the money is to be raised is specified. There is no authority whatever conveyed to raise money by taxation, for the purpose of subsequent distribution among the states, unless the phrase ‘general welfare’ includes such a power. The doctrine, once held by a party upon whose principles the senator and his friends now act, in relation to the executive department, that those phrases included a grant of power, has been long since explodedand abandoned. They are now, by common consent, understood to indicate a purpose, and not to vest a power. The clause of the constitution, fairly construed and understood, means that the taxing power is to be exerted to raise money to enable congress to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare. And it is to provide for the general welfare, in any exigency, by a fair exercise of the powers granted in the constitution. The republican party of 1798, in whose school I was brought up, and to whose rules of interpreting the constitution I have ever adhered, maintained that this was a limited government; that it had no powers but granted powers, or powers necessary and proper to carry into effect the granted powers; and that, in any given instance of the exercise of power, it was necessary to show the specific grant of it, or that the proposed measure was necessary and proper to carry into effect a specifically granted power or powers.

There is, then, I repeat, no power or authority in the general government to lay and collect taxes in order to distribute the proceeds among the states. Such a financial project, if any administration were mad enough to adopt it, would be a flagrant usurpation. But how stands the case as to the land power? There is not, in the whole constitution, a single line or word that indicates an intention that the proceeds of the public lands should come into the public treasury, to be used as a portion of the revenue of the government. On the contrary, the unlimited grant of power to raise revenue in all the forms of taxation, would seem to manifest that that was to be the source of supply, and not the public lands. But the grant of power to congress over the public lands in the constitution is ample and comprehensive. ‘The congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States.’ This is a broad, unlimited, and plenary power, subject to no restriction other than a sound, practical, and statesmanlike discretion, to be exercised by congress. It applies to all the territory and property of the United States, whether acquired by treaty with foreign powers, or by cessions of particular states, or however obtained. It cannot be denied, that the right to dispose of the territory and property of the United States, includes a right to dispose of the proceeds of their territory and property, and consequently a right to distribute those proceeds among the states. If the general clause in the constitution allows and authorizes, as I think it clearly does, distribution among the several states, I will hereafter show that the conditions on which the states ceded to the United States can only now receive their just and equitable fulfilment by distribution.

The senator from New York argued, that if the power contended for, to dispose of the territory and property of the United States, or their proceeds, existed, it would embrace the national ships, publicbuildings, magazines, dock-yards, and whatever else belonged to the government. And so it would. There is not a doubt of it; but when will congress ever perpetrate such a folly as to distribute this national property. It annually distributes arms, according to a fixed rule, among the states, with great propriety. Are they not property belonging to the United States? To whose authority is the use of them assigned? To that of the states. And we may safely conclude, that when it is expedient to distribute, congress will make distribution, and when it is best to retain any national property, under the common authority, it will remain subject to it. I challenge the senator, or any other person, to show any limitation on the power of congress to dispose of the territory or property of the United States or their proceeds, but that which may be found in the terms of the deeds of cession, or in a sound and just discretion. Come on; who can show it? Has it not been shown, that the taxing power, by a specification of the objects for which it is to be exercised, excludes all idea of raising money for the purpose of distribution? And that the land power places distribution on a totally different footing? That no part of the proceeds of the public domain compose necessarily, or perhaps properly, a portion of the public revenue? What is the language of the constitution? That to pay the debts, provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States, you may take the proceeds of the public lands? No, no. It says, for these ends, in other words, for the conduct of the government of the union, you shall have power, unlimited as to amount and objects, to lay taxes. That is what it says; and if you go to the constitution, this is its answer. You have no right to go for power any where else.

Hereafter, I shall endeavor further to show, that, by adopting the distribution principle, you do not exercise or affect the taxing power; that you will be setting no dangerous precedent, as is alleged; and that you will, in fact, only pay an honest debt to the states, too long withheld from them, and of which some of them now stand in the greatest need.

In the opposition to distribution, we find associated together the friends of preëmption, the friends of graduation, and the friends of a cession of the whole of the public lands to a few of the states. Instead of reproaching us with a want of constitutional power to make an equitable and just distribution of the proceeds of the sales of the public lands among all the states, they would do well to point to the constitutional authority, or to the page in the code of justice, by which their projects are to be maintained. But it is not my purpose now to dwell on these matters. My present object is with the argument of the senator from New York, and his friends, founded on financial considerations.

All at once these gentlemen seem to be deeply interested in the revenue derivable from the public lands. Listen to them now, andyou would suppose that heretofore they had always been, and hereafter would continue to be, decidedly and warmly in favor of carefully husbanding the public domain, and obtaining from it the greatest practicable amount of revenue, for the exclusive use of the general government. You would imagine that none of them had ever espoused or sanctioned any scheme for wasting or squandering the public lands; that they regarded them as a sacred and inviolable fund, to be preserved for the benefit of posterity, as well as this generation.