H. OF R.]

Duty on Sugar.

[FEB. 26, 1831.

ceptions to be obviated? I know of but one way, and gone there, and embarked their all in the business, and that is, by free and frequent intercommunication. That is one reason, perhaps, why I have generally, whenever I had a chance, given my vote for the construction of roads. I consider it a national benefit--a great national object. Whenever any one man is induced to travel beyond the narrow limits of his own immediate vicinage, to go to see, and visit, and hold communion with his fellow-citizens in other portions of the country, he then sees things as they are--not as he has been told they are: he is thereby enabled to rectify false pre-impressions, and to heal himself of the besetting sin of misguided prejudice. He is sure to return home a better philosopher, a better citizen, and a better man.

whom it is now so perfectly natural for the gentleman to seek to destroy-for I have the pleasure to count several Georgians among the number of my most esteemed and valued acquaintances. If he will do this, I will pledge myself for a total, radical revolution in his ideas on this subject. He will at once perceive that it is not for ourselves we distil the sweets-that we are, in fact, but the laboring swarms who hive the honey for the ravenous vermin in our neighborhood to plunder; and I feel assured, that when he bids us adieu--which to us will be a moment of sadness--he will exclaim in candor, if not in sorrowSic vos non vobis mellificatis apes.

I would here gladly turn my back on this part of the Instead of giving my vote to abridge the mileage of a subject. I fear I have already said too much on it. Yet member of Congress, I would vote to extend it-instead I must be allowed, before I dismiss it, to relate to the gentleman an incident or two, of no great zest or importance in themselves, but which may, I trust, have a tendency to convince him of the danger there is in his searches after truth--though it be a question with some whether truth be always the object of gentlemen's pursuit--to rely too much on what he is told, especially on this subject of sugar making.

of passing bills to make him go in a straight line through the air, like some migrating goose that sees a thousand miles off the lake in which she soon intends to lave, and, springing into ether, wings her way with unerring pinion --I would, if possible, make him visit every State in the Union, and would pay him for it. He might go zigzag, or he might go round; but go he should, if practicable, into every one-from a conviction that when he next approached these halls, he would come with feelings chastened and subdued, and in a mood of mind better fitting to perform those high functions in which he represents the Deity on earth, of making laws for the government and happiness of his fellow-men.

sway in Crete.

The first incident I would mention to him relates to a man from his own State, a Georgian. This Georgian, about two years ago, associated himself with several other persons connected with him by ties contracted in that country, to establish one of those plantations. They were none of them practical farmers; if they had been, they Mr. Speaker, there is a little trait of personal history, probably would never have touched it. The Georgian, which most of us have been made to read in the day-whom it suits my purpose to designate as the principal of spring of our time. It relates to a most excellent man the firm, owning a predilection for the land of his former and wise lawgiver, who was afterwards promoted to a very abode, went back to Georgia, in all likelihood to the gentlehigh station in the judiciary. I do not, just now, recol- man's own county, and laid out fifteen thousand dollars in lect his name, nor is it material to determine, but he held laborers. He next repaired to the Western country, and expended five or six thousand dollars in iron castings and This sage lawmaker, harboring in his bosom the wish machinery; he then returned home, and stocked his farm and the design to better the lot of his people, who had with the usual number of horses, probably about fifteen grown restive, they scarcely knew why, resolved to jour-hundred dollars' worth, brought from the West, and filled ney into foreign parts, in order to study the polity, and his granaries from the great redundancy of their Westexamine with his own eyes the condition and resources of ern stores. Take it all in all, it was an establishment which some other States that were then in high renown. Fame, must have cost him about fifty thousand dollars, not one with her many tongues, told him of the wealth and splen- cent of which was the previous product of the cane. And dor of Egypt-the exuberance of her soil--the grandeur mark me, at the very outset, at least one-half this capital and magnificence of her monuments-and her catacombs. is diffused over these United States, and of that half, more Thither, said he, will I go. Accordingly, having provid- than a moiety goes to the pockets of the people of Georgia. ed the muniments of his voyage, on the appointed day he Here you have a common instance of one of those endeparted for the land of the Nile. He visited Memphis, gines of oppression described by the gentleman. Cairo, and Thebes with her hundred gates; and what did springs into life, equipped and ready for action, not frown= he see? Why, with some semblance of external splendor, ing in martial helmet, and brandishing in dexter the quie he saw mummies, and he met the seven plagues of vering hasta of battle, but holding in its open and distendEgypt. Casting his eyes abroad through the land, he ed palms the emblem and the medium of commerce; the beheld a people, with a soil indeed of unbounded fertility, incentive at once, and the reward of peaceful industry. yet poor, toil-worn, and depressed themselves, while from And before it has made the first step, yea, before its the horn of plenty they poured abundance into the lap of young limbs have essayed the first attempt at motion, it all the surrounding States. He was satisfied--he hastened scatters fifteen thousand dollars into the bosoms of the back to his own country, which he now liked better, and people of Georgia. And, sir, it is but a fair specimen of found it to be better off than all those of which he had our doings in that way. Of the seven hundred plantations heard so much. He applied himself to soothe and compose in that country, six hundred, at least, within the last ten the agitated minds of his people; and, by his precept and or fifteen years, would furnish the elements of a similar his example, he led them on to commerce, to agriculture, history. Ex uno discite omnes. to arts, and to happiness.

It

But, sir, this is not the moral with which I wished to Now, if the gentleman from Georgia would but do the point the tale. I will proceed with it. The Georgian same! If he, or any of his friends who think as he does, now set himself about to organize his plantation and erect would only vouchsafe to come for a season, and reside his buildings. For the first year he made nothing; he exwith us on the Delta of our great father of waters! We pected to make nothing. During all that period, nothing have some hospitality, and would hail his coming with de- was heard within his borders but the note of preparation. light; and would take the pains to investigate the process, It was the constant clink of the outlayings of his cash; the and scrutinize the account: not the account of his own co-regular fall of the carpenter's axe, with the chime of the pious imagination, but the actual account-book of any of blacksmith's hammer beating time on the anvil. our farmers of his choice. If he should prefer it, I would But the terraqueous thing moved on in its orbit, until introduce him to some of his own immediate countrymen, now another autumnal sun shone out upon the land. possibly his own former associates and friends, who have period to which I now allude was about the last of Octo

The

FEB. 26, 1831.]

Duty on Sugar.

[H. of R.

ber, 1830, a few days before I left home to come to my country by the culture of sugar; and that when he came duties here. By this time some yellow cane waved in the out last year to, pay them a visit, they "particularly adgentleman's field; his houses were up, and he was busily mired" the entire simplicity of his deportment and the engaged in preparation to commence the manufacture of total absence in his person of that "pride, pomp, and cirsugar on a new and expensive principle, which attracted cumstance" which usually attend as ministering handmaids some attention through the neighborhood. to men of such extensive wealth and revenues. I replied At that juncture the narrator happened to be some dis-that I had the honor of knowing Doctor Betty, but that I tance in the interior, from whence I set out to proceed to never observed any semblance of regality, nor even noticmy point of embarkation, intending to take the gentleman's ed any symptoms of opulence beneath his plain but hospihouse in my way. When I got within twenty miles of his table roof-that at any rate it was not the fashion of folks residence, I was informed by several persons whom I met, there to be so very rich. But I said I had it in my power intelligent persons, that he had commenced his operations; to ascertain precisely what had been the Doctor's achievethat he had been rolling, as we term it there, for several ments in that branch of agriculture, and that I would let days, and that his new experiment succeeded wonderfully; him know it. Is this substantially true, sir? [The gentlethat it was turning him out two hogsheads and a half to man to whom the interrogation was addressed assented, the acre! My heart gladdened at the tidings, and throw- and said it was, with some explanations which he would ing the reins to the companion of my way, we proceeded on give.] Sir, continued Mr. W., I do not pretend to quote --until coming in sight of his dwelling, I strained my op- the exact phraseology: in speechifying we sometimes amtics in the direction, and looked long and intensely, but I plify the words of ordinary discourse, but I think I have saw no smoke or vapor curling in bold relief against tlie given the substance of the conversation, though I shall be sky. Drawing still nigher, could perceive no throng happy to hear any explanation, and, if I have mistaken any of men, and horses and carts, as is wont on occasions such thing, to stand corrected. as that I thought I was approaching. In point of fact, he had not commenced the manufacture of sugar at all. He was not ready to begin; he did not expect to begin for fif teen days to come.

Well, sir, I have not yet been as good as my word, and I am happy to have this occasion to fulfil the promise, by conveying to the gentleman the information alluded to.

I hold in my hand an accurate and authentic statement Now, I wonder if that story, which was told me in shape -a paper printed annually at New Orleans-of the quanso plausible, within twenty miles of his residence, had tity of sugar made on each and every plantation of the been caught up by "that thing which every moment flies, State during the years 1828 and 1829, the precise years in and gains new strength and vigor as she goes," and had which Doctor Betty had operated before his last visit to been repeated from tongue to tongue, of credible men Carolina; and, on referring to the table, I find that in 1828, all, until it had been wafted to the cars of his friends in which was a favorable year, Dr. Betty and his partner Georgia, what it would have been like by that time. Why, made fifty-six hogsheads of sugar; that on the following the romaunt with which the gentleman has entertained us year, 1829, which was an unfortunate one generally, they here, of eight and ten hogsheads to the acre, or to the made thirty-seven hogsheads, giving an aggregate crop of hand, would have been stale, vapid, and wholly unpiquant sugar, for two years, of ninety-three hogsheads-sold at in the comparison. Nay, the balderdash we constantly five and a half cents a pound, (and it is not at all probable see going the rounds of the newspapers, derived from an it averaged that much,) equal in money to five thousand equally authentic source, relieved by a little wilful misre- one hundred and fifteen dollars. The estimate of molaspresentation; those mendacious absurdities, generated by ses (and it is a liberal estimate) is forty gallons to the hogsscribblers who never saw sugar cane grow, and forming a compound fit only to be gulped by boobies-would have had to hide their diminished heads, as devoid of relative interest and poignancy.

Divide

head, which, on the ninety-three hogsheads, gives them three thousand seven hundred and twenty gallons-sold at fifteen cents the gallon, equal in money to five hundred and fifty-eight dollars: now, add this to the product of the I will beg leave to narrate another fact, which relates sugar, and you find that they have, for the two years, an to a gentleman formerly of South Carolina, now one of aggregate crop of sugar and molasses, amounting to five those of whom I am the unworthy representative. His thousand six hundred and seventy-three dollars. name-it is Doctor Betty. I feel that I need an apology the sum between the two years, and it leaves to each year for thus pressing his name into the debate; but when I see the average partnership crop of two thousand eight hunit published in a printed paper to which it is necessary I dred and thirty-six dollars and fifty-cents; which, subdi#should refer, and as I know him to be a man of note in vided between the two partners, Dr. Betty's quotient is that country, and well known to some gentlemen here fourteen hundred and eighteen dollars and twenty-five from that State, I hope he will pardon the freedom in favor cents. Now, partly from a munificent disposition, and of the motive, which is none other than an earnest desire partly for the convenience of a round sum, let us allow to correct error, and a wish to divest the truth of that him a bonus of eighty-one dollars and seventy-five cents opaque integunent of fiction and misrepresentation which more-and then he has a gross crop of fifteen hundred is so apt to cling around her honest form. dollars per annum! And what comes of the plantation Well, sir, about three years ago the Doctor came into expenses during the time? Why, sir, the crops did not that country, and bought a farm; not for his own sole ac- pay them. Nay, I assert it fearlessly that the crops of count, for he was, and still is, the copartner of another in both years did not pay the expenses of one. Therefore, Take it altogether, it is an important establishment, at the time Doctor Betty last visited his friends in Carolina, with thirty or forty servants, and which, in all, must have he had not made one cent by the cultivation of sugar; on cost them at least fifty thousand dollars, valuing the land the contrary, he must have been several thousand dollars very low; fully such a one as, in the gentleman's esti- out of pocket, independently of his original plantation inmate, always yields its owner a nett profit of twenty thou- vestment: and yet this is the man that was expected to sand dollars a year-and there he has been ever since, come like some oriental Satrap, with a glittering cavalcade making sugar, and getting very rich, as a matter of course. of caparisoned steeds and laced menials; instead of which, Some weeks ago it was since this session of Congress, he presents himself in simple guise, like any other man gentleman from South Carolina, whom I have now the travelling to see his friends, and revisit the graves of his gratification to see nigh me on this floor, inquired of me fathers; and, as he passes, they exclaim, see the rich about Doctor Betty-adding, in the course of the conver- sugar planter, all the way from the banks of the Mississippi; sation, that the Doctor's friends in Carolina were perfect- the man who holds in hands the wealth of provinces spoilly aware of the great fortune he had accumulated in that ed to feed his luxuries!'" "But," they say, "he does not

it.

a

H. OF R.]

Duty on Sugar.

[FEB. 26, 1831.

let on; he wishes to be incog. in this respect; he is modest" ranges from five to six, or seven per cent. per annum, 2c-and they admire!! Were ever men so insulted in their cording to the varying opinions of persons in different poverty? This is indeed to feel "the proud man's con- parts of the country, between whom there was no concert tumely!" or understanding, whose estimates were predicated on different bases, and where, of course, property has a different valuation, as it has in different parts of every coun try beneath the sun.

Now, sir, to what does the argument tend? Is it that, like Doctor Betty, none of us have as yet made any thing on our capital? That it is a hopeless, bootless, sysiphean task we are all engaged in? No, sir, that is not at all what

1 mean.

But I would particularly point him to the tabular stateDoctor Betty's is a new establishment, not yet ment annexed to the report of the committee of Plaque brought to the point of productiveness; he hopes that in mine--it is the first on the file-which is the district in the process of time it may yield him a support. Di cæptis ad-State where the culture has been longest known, and spirate suis.

most successfully prosecuted, and where the subject is best understood. They made out the profit, in that d'strict, to be five per cent. and 9-100-that is, a very small fraction more than five per cent. And, sir, it is no fancy piece of theirs; it is a picture from the real life; a sketch of what has been actually realized in that district for the last five years, when the price of sugar was more than a cent in the pound above what it now is.

All I wish to convey, and on which I insist, is, that the sugar growers of Louisiana are doing precisely as all other persons are, in these times of universal peace and general over production, and not one whit better. On the contrary, it is my religious belief that the condition of most of them is already worse, and is rapidly becoming far more deplorable, than that of either the cotton or the tobacco growers of Georgia or Virginia. And why? Because I will here take this opportunity to say, in addition, their occupation is not one-half so expensive as ours. that I had occasion to witness the extraordinary pains-l When the cotton or the tobacco planter makes a dollar, am well aware that a captious temper may object to these it is his, or nearly so; but the poor sugar planter, whose documents-I have actually heard something of the kind employment, together with agriculture, combines manu- intimated, that they proceed from persons engaged in the facture of the most costly kind, whenever he makes a dol-business, and are consequently but the testimony of inte lar, is, of necessity, and by a kind of condition precedent, rested witnesses. The objection is a convenient one; but tributary to the rest of you for more than one-half of it. I maintain that those documents furnish the best evidence Yes, and in a great, great many instances, he has to remit the nature of the case admits of. If you were preresolved two to you for every one that he makes. And yet he has to believe nothing but your own fantasies, why call for no alternative; your productions he cannot do without; he the vouchers? You applied for the information; and I must send you his regular quota of contribution. His crop say that I had occasion to witness the extraordinary pains, may fail, or may fall short; expense, horrid expense, still the incumbent study, with which the well informed, prac stalks at his heels, and he must raise the wind to satisfy tical men who prepared the Plaquemine report labored the demands of the fiend, or "giye up the ship" at once. to gain the information, and to make it scrupulously In fact, it is the most idle amusement which can beguile rate in all its details; and, as far is my testimony is worth, the leisure hours of a man, to sit down to count what sugar I prove here, and to the world, that their names, as well planters make. What do steamboats make? What do as the names by which the other returns from the State ship owners make? What do merchants make. What are avouched, afford a pledge of the highest kind of the do manufacturers of every kind make? And what do entire faith which is due to any statement to which they sugar planters make? I will tell you what they make: Like may be appended. all other persons engaged in branches of industry, hazardous in their nature, and requiring capital for their exercise, some of them, under favorable circumstances, with luck on their side, and with rigid economy and unflagging industry skilfully directed, do make out to get along, and better their condition. There are even some who may be said to have made a fortune at the business, which means that they happened to make a good bargain, to light upon a period of abundant crops, to have lived in the days of high prices, or to have profited by some casual rise in the value of the product-just what is seen in every other part of the globe.

accu

Sir, on this ridiculous theory of our supposed exorbitant profits, 1 feel as if I had been tempted to dwell too lorg yet it was the burden of the gentleman's song, and it is the eternal theme with which my eyes and my ears are assailed, and my perfect knowledge to the contrary offend ed, whether I cast a glance upon the columns of a certain set of newspapers, or hear it mentioned as matter of discourse; and I could not well do otherwise than I have done.

[Here the SPEAKER reminded Mr. W. that the hour for which the rule had been suspended had expired; when a motion was made further to suspend the rule for half an hour, which prevailed by two-thirds; and Mr. W., after thanking the House for such unusual indulgence, proceeded.]

There is another portion of those said sugar planters, and that not a small one, who accomplish nothing in the way of success, but merely drag on, from year to year, a lengthening and galling chain, making not enough to buy I will now, said he, most cheerfully turn from the diswhat they must buy from you, and to meet the interest quisition as to what have been, or may hereafter be, our accruing on their debt, whatever may be its amount. gains from the culture of sugar, to consider its nationa While others, and they are not so very few, make short importance, and inquire what are, if any, the benefits work of it-they burst, blow up, and lose all in a short which have flowed from it to the whole people of the venture. And there they stand, like wrecks along the United States.

shore over which the hurricane has swept, to admonish In casting about in quest of its advantages to the nation those who, like the gentleman from Georgia, come boom- at large, I find them to consist chiefly in two respects, ing along in fancy's barge, with all the canvas of their which respects are the primary objects for which mer imagination out-of the hazards which lie in the path of have forsaken their woods and their caves, to betake them the thoughtless navigator who adventures on that perilous selves to communities, and form the social compact, viz to obtain the things necessary to a comfortable livelihood

sea.

If there be any gentleman here who really does desire and which they have to buy at a cheap price, and, at the to obtain an approximation to, and an equation of, what same time, to find a good market for whatever they have may be made by sugar planting in Louisiana, in its most to sell; both which ends, I contend, have been eminently success practice, I must refer him, for the information, subserved and promoted by the creation of that interes to the documents transmitted from the Treasury Depart-in Louisiana. That the effect of it has been to give to ment, where he will see that the possible profit there the people of the United States the article of sugar at :

FEB. 26, 1831.]

Duty on Sugar.

[H. OF R.

much cheaper price than they ever would have had it him to buy it to fatten his swine upon, a corresponding otherwise; and that it has created an invaluable market declension has taken place in the West Indies. There, for all their productions. he says, it has been bought as low as four cents. Who And, first, as to the price. Does not the gentleman re- does not know that? But does the gentleman believe but collect (I well remember the time) when the general price that we have contributed extensively to that state of of sugar throughout the United States was twenty cents things by our competition with those islanders? Does he the pound? Sir, the day is not very long gone by since think that we have not been accessory to the fact of five pounds of sugar were considered every where in the knocking down the price, even in the West Indies? Does cities, at the most accessible points, at Natchez, at New he really imagine that the additional supply of one hunOrleans, as the fair standard equivalent of the round silver dred millions of pounds to the great market of the world dollar. When the thrifty housewife wanted a few pounds has not had a powerful agency in bringing the price down of the luxury, she sent her servant to the store with a dol---down to what we see it? If not, then I would thank lar, expecting, as a matter of course, to receive her sack him to inform us whence it is that the price has generally of five pounds in return. At places inland, where the declined just about in the ratio of the increase of the price was necessarily enhanced by transportation, it was quantity with us; and, vice versa, that the price has geneno doubt much more. rally risen whenever the quantity with us has fallen short.

We

In 1815, immediately after the war, the wholesale price No longer ago than last year, 1829, the seasons proved of our own products at New Orleans was eighteen or disastrous to us. The quantum of sugar raised in the twenty cents the pound. For several years after, it was State did little more, if any thing, than cover the aggregenerally sold at from ten to fifteen cents; and what has gate expenses of the plantations which grew it. been going on since? Why, we have been gradually re-made but forty-seven thousand hogsheads. And what ducing the price to nine, to eight, to seven, to six cents, ensued thereupon? Why, the price ranged a full cent or until we have now got it down to the freezing point of a cent and a half in the pound higher than it does at this five cents. time; many crops were sold for more than seven eents: this year, 1830, we approximate to one hundred thousand hogsheads, and down falls the price to five cents.

The history of the decline and fall-not of the Roman empire, but what more immediately concerns the people whom I represent-of the empire of the staple by which they get their hard-earned bread, deserves to be looked a little further into.

The authority from which I draw my data, and from which I beg leave to read, is a statement furnished by the firm of Lippincott, Richards, & Co., of Philadelphia, a highly respectable house, auctioneers, and sellers of sugar, and who have been such for a period of time, of which I have no means of tracing the commencement. I will not read the entire document, but restrict myself to one item in each year. The prices are carried out as per hundred weight. 1811, Nov. 6, 1812, Sept. 16, 1813, Aug. 2, 1814, March 26, 1815, June 22, 1816, April 20, 1817, April 2, 1818, June 23, 1819, June 3,

54 hhds. sugar,

$10 30 a 14 30 5 hhds. New Orleans, 14 60 a 14 85 22 10 a 22 50

50 hhds. 90 hhds.

20 00 a 20 75

To me it looks like a proposition too plain for argument to say, that, by the mutual rivalry which has been got up between the insulars and ourselves, the general demand has not kept pace with the rapid increase of the supply: we act and react on each other; and that hence it is you witness this extraordinary depression of the price.

I will put the hypothesis. Suppose that competition had never been fostered in Louisiana, and the elemental principle of those hundred millions of pounds which we now supply had, until this day, been left dormant in the bosom of the untilled earth; and, during all this lapse, the people of the United States had continued to be dependent on the islands for those progressive hundred millions of pounds: does any one fancy he would ever have witnessed that astonishing depression of the price which has occurred? Why, in such a posture of affairs, it is far have been equal to the growth of the demand in Europe, more probable that the increase of the quantity would not and here, in this rapidly augmenting and consuming country of twelve or fifteen millions of people; and, if so, instead of falling, the price would have risen all the while, and you would be paying more for it at this day than at any former period.

9 hhds. New Orleans, 24 00 a 20 00 25 hhds. New Orleans, 15 25 a 16 50 46 hhds. New Orleans, 13 00 a 13 50 38 hhds. New Orleans, 11 00 a 12 90 57 hhds. New Orleans, 11 70 a 12 00 The account is brought no lower down than 1819, but it comes far enough to show, that, from a peace price, Sir, this is not altogether theory. It is not a mere supvarying from ten to fifteen cents, and a war price, ranging posititious, problematical case; it is a case sustained by from twenty to twenty-four cents, we have got it down, actual observation of what has happened in regard to according to the gentleman's own intelligence, to the many other things. I will take, for instance, the article average price of five and a quarter cents the pound. of Sherry wine, which has risen some twenty-five or thirty Now, I wonder if this simple fact be of no importance to the people of the United States. I think it is of some slight importance. It must be no very inconvenient or uncomfortable thing to every body to have this delicious aliment, this pleasant dulcifier of life, at so very cheap a price as five or five and a quarter cents the pound.

But the gentleman from Georgia is not the man to take upon trust "the goods the gods provide him," While he feels the beneficial effect, it is necessary for him to trace the cause. The mind of man, I am aware, is an active principle, endowed with faculties to range abroad through nature; and, when the breeze of heaven rushes by him, fraught with fragrance and with health, he must needs list whence it cometh, and whither it goeth;" and he has a right to do so, if he can. Felix qui potuit rerum

per cent. within the last few years; a fact which I the rather select, from the supposition that every gentleman here can practically attest it. And why has it risen? From the increased consumption; no other cause can be assigned. You have diminished the duty, and the thing has risen; because, while the demand has been increasing, while the wine has been growing a more fashionable potation, (thanks, perhaps, to the leech who discovered its curative virtue,) there has been no home production to compete with the foreign supply.

Gentlemen say that sugar has become an object of general use-an article of primary necessity to the people: the very strongest reason which, in the common sense of mankind, can possibly be assigned for the encouragement of its production here, in the midst of the people to whom it is an article of primary necessity: the very ground on The gentleman accordingly institutes his researches, which all our wisest statesmen have uniformly recommendand finds that, although the price of this once costly lux-ed it, and other things similar in character, to the fosterury has fallen so very low that it might be good policy in ing protection of Government. The reason which prompts

cognoscere causas.

H. OF R.]

Duly on Sugar.

[FEB. 26, 1831.

the gentleman to try and crush the necessary product at advantages may be gained over it; and eventually, perhaps, home, is the very policy which led France, (it only shows strike up a kind of bargain, calculated to place your how learned statesmen, as well as doctors, differ,) with adversaries on the vantage ground, and drive your poor colonies capable of furnishing it so abundantly and so contemned flag from the ocean. Do this, I say, and you cheap, to assess a heavy duty, to encourage its manufac- will soon cease to have any cause to complain of the smallture from the beet, in order that her people, to whom it ness of the price in comparison with the duty; you will is as much an article of primary necessity as it is to us, soon see a rise of fifty or a hundred per cent. in this counmight participate in the labor, and come in for a share of try. We shall then see who is taxed and oppressed. the expenditures which the manufacture requires; and, Then, in sooth, shall we feel the gripe of the grinding also, that they might, in part, derive their supply from monopolist," and own, too, the might of the forestalling their own soil, free from the casualties of the boisterous speculator; from whose fraternity, even at this moment, element over which it had to be transported, and secure methinks I hear but one voice, from New Orleans to Bosfrom the deeds of violence that are constantly done on its ton, calling on you to do the deed of folly, and commit to surface. their tender mercies the exclusive care of supplying your people with the article of primary necessity!

It is an article of primary necessity to the people, is it? Why to be sure it is: and that they knew it to be so, was The gentleman, in his speech or preamble, (no matter just what, in 1816, impelled the Congress of the United which, for he intended his preamble as a speech,) talks States to adopt the policy, and place this duty on the about the three cents duty, levied on the consumer, as a footing on which it has stood ever since. And, sir, what bounty to the producer, and augmenting the price to each portions of the American people were then the freest and by the amount of duty; and from thence he conjures up the foremost to plight their troth to us, and tempt us to his "chimera dire," to bewilder the minds of his people, embark our fortunes in the precarious culture? It was and "silence the whistle of his ploughmen," about milthe people of Georgia, and Carolina, and Virginia, and lions of taxes!-taxes which, in nature, in reason, and in Tennessce-the very men who now pursue us with hound truth, have about as much existence as the fabled monand with horn. ster itself, which is but a spurious offspring of a wayward fancy.

In 1816, when the proposal was made on this floor to add one half cent for protection, the representation of He himself demonstrates the idea to be baseless. To Georgia voted for it unanimously; so also did the delega- begin to make out the proposition, he should have shown tion from Tennessee. The measure was sustained by the that the same quality of sugar sold in the West Indies for wisdom of the Archers, and the Macons, and the Calhouns, three cents in the pound less than at New Orleans. Did as well as by the sapient forecast and reproachless virtue he show any such thing? No. Did he even assert it? No: of Lowndes the very prophets and apostles of your poli- he ventured no direct asseveration about it. But he did tical creed. hold out an inuendo. Of what?-of a difference of three And, sir, what was the animating motive with the men cents? No, but of about one cent; which at once destroys of that day? They were groaning under the sense of two-thirds of his position. In New Orleans, he says, the present burdens, and smarting with the recollection of average price is five and a quarter cents, while, in the recent and greater oppression. By resorting to the pro- West Indies, he intimates, it has been bought for four cents. tective expedient, they sought to palliate the evils to Bought for four cents! Now, it does seem to me, that which both they and their people were then so sensibly if it were at all important, which I conceive it is not, to alive, and to prevent the possible recurrence of woes still find how the respective markets stood, a different mode fresh in their remembrance. And has not the wisdom of of analysis might have been adopted. If any man of ordi their ways been fully tested by that great assayer of hu- nary intellect had been put on the investigation, he would, man actions--time? Have we not already done more in probably, have deemed it proper to try and ascertain, not their behalf than they ever imagined we could do? From what was the average price at one place, and what it had a general average, in all times, of from ten to fifteen cents, been bought for at another, but what was the average and an occasional war average of from twenty to twenty-price at both places.

I am

four cents, we have brought the price down to the ave- Bought for four cents in the West Indies! Why, I raise rage of five cents and a quarter, as stated by the gentle- no contest at all on that point. I am free to admit that it man himself. And what more could the cupidity of any has been bought for four cents and for two cents. man desire? Is not it enough to gratify the most untoward sure that I have frequently known our sugars at New propensity for cheap? Orleans bought for four cents and for two cents, at a time Yet this very fact of the extreme modicity of the pre- when the general average price ranged a full cent, or sent price is, in part, what calls forth the gentleman's a cent and a half, higher than it does now; those, howmoaning. In his preamble he whereascs about the extra-ever, were extreme cases of inferior sugar, or sugar sold vagance of the duty in proportion to the price. Now, if at a sacrifice.

the duty be extravagant, in comparison to the price, the Since it has so happened that we have gone into some converse must follow, that the price is insignificant in examination as to the respective prices, let us see if we comparison with the duty: yet, at the time you saw fit to have any means of elucidation at hand.' The most concreate the duty, it was but small in relation to the price. venient source to which I can apply, would be, I think, And if there be any argument in the preambular propo- the report of your own Treasury Department, made some sition, it must be the most inconvenient one in the world; weeks ago, in compliance with a call from this House; seeing that the more we lower the price, the more we moved, no doubt, with no very friendly purpose to the strengthen the augument against us; insomuch that by the subject, but for which I acknowledge obligation to the time we give him sugar for nothing, (as we seem likely mover, seeing it has furnished me with documentary evisoon to do, if we keep on in the same way,) the argument dence of a fact which I was not aware was so easily to be will be perfectly irresistible. obtained.

The report contains a statement of the quantity of sugar imported into the United States for a number of years, with its average cost at the places whence imported. I take the period nighest our own time, viz. nine months of 1830, and selecting from it the average price of brown sugar, at the several places of its growth, I find the table

But go on, and consummate your work. Only fulminate the thunders of your Vatican against us: pronounce your anathema, and bid our factories be still: and go back to the islands of your love, with a new born demand of one -hundred millions of pounds: and then send forth your diploma's to sue and entreat, and allude disparagingly to the policy of their own country, and point out wherein to be as follows: