SALT; THE UNIVERSALITY OF ITS SUPPLY; MYSTERY AND INDISPENSABILITY
OF ITS USE; TYRANNY AND IMPIETY OF ITS TAXATION; SPEECH OF MR.
BENTON: EXTRACTS.
It is probable that salt is the most abundant substance of our
globe--that it is more abundant than earth itself. Like other
necessaries of life--like air, and water, and food--it is
universally diffused, and inexhaustibly supplied. It is found in
all climates, and in a great variety of forms. The waters hold
it in solution; the earth contains it in solid masses. Every sea
contains it. It is found in all the boundless oceans which surround
and penetrate the earth, and through all their fathomless depths.
Many inland seas, lakes, ponds, and pools are impregnated with it.
Streams of saline water, in innumerable places, emerging from the
bowels of the earth, approach its surface, and either issue from it
in perennial springs, or are easily reached by wells. In the depths
of the earth itself it is found in solid masses of interminable
extent. Thus inexhaustibly abundant, and universally diffused,
the wisdom and goodness of Providence is further manifested in
the cheapness and facility of the preparation of this necessary
of life, for the use of man. In all the warm latitudes, and
especially between the tropics, nature herself performs the work.
The beams of the sun evaporate the sea water in all the low and
shallow reservoirs, where it is driven by the winds, or admitted
by the art of man; and this evaporation leaves behind a deposit
of pure salt, ready for use, and costing very little more than
the labor of gathering it up. In the interior, and in the colder
latitudes, artificial heat is substituted for the beams of the sun:
the simplest process of boiling is resorted to; and where fuel
is abundant, and especially coal, the preparation of this prime
necessary is still cheap and easy; and from six to ten cents the
real bushel may be considered as the ordinary cost of production.
Such is the bountiful and cheap supply of this article, which a
beneficent Providence has provided for us. The Supreme Ruler of
the Universe has done every thing to supply his creatures with it.
Man, the fleeting shadow of an instant, invested with his little
brief authority, has done much to deprive them of it. In all ages
of the world, and in all countries, salt has been a subject, at
different periods, of heavy taxation, and sometimes of individual
or of government monopoly; and precisely, because being an article
that no man could do without, the government was sure of its tax,
and the monopolizer of his price. Almost all nations, in some period
of their history, have suffered the separate or double infliction
of a tax, and a monopoly on its salt; and, at some period, all have
freed themselves, from one or both. At present, there remain but two
countries which suffer both evils, our America, and the British East
Indies. All others have got rid of the monopoly; many have got rid
of the tax. Among others, the very country from which we copied it,
and the one above all others least able to do without the product of
the tax. England, though loaded with debt, and taxed in every thing,
is now free from the salt tax. Since 1822, it has been totally
suppressed; and this necessary of life is now as free there as air
and water. She even has a statute to guard its price, and common
law to prevent its monopoly.
This act was passed in 1807. The common law of England punishes all
monopolizers, forestallers, and regraters. The Parliament, in 1807,
took cognizance of a reported combination to raise the price of
salt, and examined the manufacturers on oath: and rebuked them.
Mr. B. said that a salt tax was not only politically, but morally
wrong: it was a species of impiety. Salt stood alone amidst the
productions of nature, without a rival or substitute, and the
preserver and purifier of all things. Most nations had regarded
it as a mystic and sacred substance. Among the heathen nations of
antiquity, and with the Jews, it was used in the religious ceremony
of the sacrifices--the head of the victim being sprinkled with salt
and water before it was offered. Among the primitive Christians,
it was the subject of Divine allusions, and the symbol of purity,
of incorruptibility, and of perpetuity. The disciples of Christ
were called "the salt of the earth;" and no language, or metaphor,
could have been more expressive of their character and mission--pure
in themselves, and an antidote to moral, as salt was to material
corruption. Among the nations of the East salt always has been, and
still is, the symbol of friendship, and the pledge of inviolable
fidelity. He that has eaten another's salt, has contracted towards
his benefactor a sacred obligation; and cannot betray or injure him
thereafter, without drawing upon himself (according to his religious
belief) the certain effects of the Divine displeasure. While many
nations have religiously regarded this substance, all have abhorred
its taxation; and this sentiment, so universal, so profound, so
inextinguishable in the human heart, is not to be overlooked by the
legislator.
Mr. B. concluded his speech with declaring implacable war against
this tax, with all its appurtenant abuses, of monopoly in one
quarter of the Union, and of undue advantages in another. He
denounced it as a tax upon the entire economy of NATURE and of
ART--a tax upon man and upon beast--upon life and upon health--upon
comfort and luxury--upon want and superfluity--upon food and
upon raiment--on washing, and on cleanliness. He called it a
heartless and tyrant tax, as inexorable as it was omnipotent and
omnipresent; a tax which no economy could avoid--no poverty could
shun--no privation escape--no cunning elude--no force resist--no
dexterity avert--no curses repulse--no prayers could deprecate. It
was a tax which invaded the entire dominion of human operations,
falling with its greatest weight upon the most helpless, and the
most meritorious; and depriving the nation of benefits infinitely
transcending in value, the amount of its own product. I devote
myself, said Mr. B., to the extirpation of this odious tax, and its
still more odious progeny--_the salt monopoly of the West_. I war
against them while they exist, and while I remain on this floor.
Twelve years have passed away--two years more than the siege of Troy
lasted--since I began this contest. Nothing disheartened by so many
defeats, in so long a time, I prosecute the war with unabated vigor;
and, relying upon the goodness of the cause, firmly calculate upon
ultimate and final success.