"It appears to me [said Mr. B.] to be a fair and practicable plan, combining the advantages of legislation and negotiation, and avoiding the objections to each. It consults the sense of the people, in leaving it to their Representatives to say on what articles duties shall be abolished for their relief; on what they shall be retained for protection and revenue; it then secures the advantage of obtaining equivalents, by referring it to the Executive to extend the benefit of the abolition to such nations as shall reciprocate the favor. To such as will not reciprocate, it leaves every thing as it now stands. The success of this plan can hardly be doubted. It addresses itself to the two most powerful passions of the human heart – interest and fear; it applies itself to the strongest principles of human action – profit and loss. For, there is no nation with whom we trade but will be benefited by the increased trade of her staple productions, which will result from a free trade in such productions; none that would not be crippled by the loss of such a trade, which loss would be the immediate effect of rejecting our system. Our position enables us to command the commercial system of the globe; to mould it to our own plan, for the benefit of the world and ourselves. The approaching extinction of the public debt puts it into our power to abolish twelve millions of duties, and to set free more than one-half of our entire commerce. We should not forego, nor lose the advantages of such a position. It occurs but seldom in the life of a nation, and once missed, is irretrievably gone, to the generation, at least, that saw and neglected the golden opportunity. We have complained, and justly, of the burthens upon our exports in foreign countries; a part of our tariff system rests upon the principle of retaliation for the injury thus done us. Retaliation, heretofore, has been our only resource: but reciprocity of injuries is not the way to enrich nations any more than individuals. It is an 'unprofitable contest,' under every aspect. But the present conjuncture, payment of the public debt, in itself a rare and almost unprecedented occurrence in the history of nations, enables us to enlarge our system; to present a choice of alternatives: one fraught with relief, the other presenting a burthen to foreign nations. The participation, or exclusion, from forty millions of free trade, annually increasing, would not admit of a second thought, in the head of any nation with which we trade. To say nothing of her gains in the participation in such a commerce, what would be her loss in the exclusion from it? How would England, France, or Germany, bear the loss of their linen, silk, or wine trade, with the United States? How could Cuba, St. Domingo, or Brazil, bear the loss of their coffee trade with us? They could not bear it at all. Deep and essential injury, ruin of industry seditions, and bloodshed, and the overthrow of administrations, would be the consequence of such loss. Yet such loss would be inevitable (and not to the few nations, or in the articles only which I have mentioned, for I have put a few instances only by way of example), but to every nation with whom we trade, that would not fall into our system, and throughout the whole list of essential articles to which our abolition extends. Our present heavy duties would continue in force against such nations; they would be abolished in favor of their rivals. We would say to them, in the language of Mr. Jefferson, free trade and navigation is not to be given in exchange for restrictions and vexations! But I feel entire confidence that it would not be necessary to use the language of menace or coercion. Amicable representations, addressed to their sense of self-interest, would be more agreeable, and not less effectual. The plan cannot fail! It is scarcely within the limits of possibility that it should fail! And if it did, what then? We have lost nothing. We remain as we were. Our present duties are still in force, and Congress can act upon them one or two years hence, in any way they please.
"Here, then, is the peculiar recommendation to my plan, that, while it secures a chance, little short of absolute certainty, of procuring an abolition of twelve millions of duties upon our exports in foreign countries, in return for an abolition of twelve millions of duties upon imports from them, it exposes nothing to risk, the abolition of duty upon the foreign article here being contingent upon the acquisition of the equivalent advantage abroad.
"I close this exposition of the principles of my bill with the single remark, that these treaties for the mutual abolition of duties should be for limited terms, say for seven or ten years, to give room for the modifications which time, and the varying pursuits of industry, may show to be necessary. Upon this idea, the bill is framed, and the period of ten years inserted by way of suggestion and exemplification of the plan. Another feature is too obvious to need a remark, that the time for the commencement of the abolition of duties is left to the Executive, who can accommodate it to the state of the revenue and the extinction of the public debt."
The plan which I proposed in this speech adopted the principle of Mr. Madison's resolutions but reversed their action. The discrimination which he proposed was a levy of five or ten per cent. more on the imports from countries which did not enter into our propositions for reciprocity: my plan, as being the same thing in substance, and less invidious in form, was a levy of five or ten per cent. less on the commerce of the reciprocating nations – thereby holding out an inducement and a benefit, instead of a threat and a penalty.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
ALUM SALT. THE ABOLITION OF THE DUTY UPON IT, AND REPEAL OF THE FISHING BOUNTY AND ALLOWANCES FOUNDED ON IT
I look upon a salt tax as a curse – as something worse than a political blunder, great as that is – as an impiety, in stinting the use, and enhancing the cost by taxation, of an article which God has made necessary to the health and comfort, and almost to the life, of every animated being – the poor dumb animal which can only manifest its wants in mute signs and frantic actions, as well as the rational and speaking man who can thank the Creator for his goodness, and curse the legislator that mars its enjoyment. There is a mystery in salt. It was used in holy sacrifice from the earliest day; and to this time, in the Oriental countries, the stranger lodging in the house, cannot kill or rob while in it, after he has tasted the master's salt. The disciples of Christ were called by their master the salt of the earth. Sacred and profane history abound in instances of people refusing to fight against the kings who had given them salt: and this mysterious deference for an article so essential to man and beast takes it out of the class of ordinary productions, and carries it up close to those vital elements – bread, water, fire, air – which Providence has made essential to life, and spread every where, that craving nature may find its supply without stint, and without tax. The venerable Mr. Macon considered a salt tax in a sacrilegious point of view – as breaking a sacred law – and fought against ours as long as his public life lasted; and I, his disciple, not disesteemed by him, commenced fighting by his side against the odious imposition; and have continued it since his death, and shall continue it until the tax ceases, or my political life terminates. Many are my speeches, and reports, against it in my senatorial life of thirty years; and among other speeches, one limited to a particular kind of salt not made in the United States, and indispensable to dried or pickled provisions. This is the alum salt, made by solar evaporation out of sea water; and being a kind not produced at home, indispensable and incapable of substitute, it had a legitimate claim to exemption from the canons of the American system. That system protected homemade fire-boiled common salt, because it had a foreign rival: we had no sun-made crystallized salt at home; and therefore had nothing to protect in taxing the foreign article. I had failed – we had all failed – in our attempts to abolish the salt tax generally: I determined