FISHING BOUNTIES AND ALLOWANCES, AND THEIR ABUSE: MR. BENTON'S
SPEECH: EXTRACTS.
The bill which I am asking leave to introduce, proposes to reduce
the fishing bounties and allowances in proportion to the reduction
which the salt duty has undergone, and is to undergo; and at the
threshold I am met by the question, whether these allowances are
founded upon the salt duty, and should rise and fall with it, or are
independent of that duty, and can be kept up without it? I hold the
affirmative of this question. I hold that the allowances rest upon
the duty, and upon nothing else, and that there is neither statute
law nor constitution to support them on any other foundation. This
is what I hold: but I should not have noticed the question at this
time except for the issue joined upon it between the senator from
Massachusetts who sits farthest on the other side (Mr. Davis), and
myself. He and I have made up an issue on this point; and without
going into the argument at this time, I will cite him to the
original petition from the Massachusetts legislature, asking for
a drawback of the duties, or, as they styled it, "a remission of
duties on all the dutiable articles used in the fisheries; and also
premiums and bounties:" and having shown this petition, I will point
to half a dozen acts of Congress which prove my position--hoping
that they may prove sufficient, but promising to come down upon him
with an avalanche of authorities if they are not.
The dutiable articles used in the fisheries, and of which a
remission duty was asked in the petition, were: salt, rum, tea,
sugar, molasses, coarse woollens, lines and hooks, sail-cloth,
cordage, iron, tonnage. This petition, presented to Congress in the
year 1790, was referred to the Secretary of State (Mr. Jefferson),
for a report upon it; and his report was, that a drawback of duties
ought to be allowed, and that the fisheries are not to draw support
from the Treasury; the words, "drawback of duty," only applying to
articles exported, was confined to the salt upon that part of the
fish which were shipped to foreign countries: and to this effect was
the legislation of Congress. I briefly review the first half dozen
of these acts.
1. The act of 1789--the same which imposed a duty of six cents a
bushel on salt, and which granted a bounty of five cents a barrel on
pickled fish exported, and also on beef and pork exported, and five
cents a quintal on dried fish exported--declared these bounties to
be "in lieu of a drawback of the duties imposed on the importation
of the salt employed and expended thereon." This act is decisive
of the whole question. In the first place it declares the bounty
to be in lieu of a drawback of the salt duty. In the second place,
it conforms to the principle of all drawbacks, and only grants the
bounty on the part of the fish which is exported. In the third
place, it gives the same bounty, and in the same words, to the
exporters of salted beef and pork which is given to the exporters of
fish: and certainly mariners were not expected to be created among
the raisers of swine and cattle--which negatives the idea of this
being an encouragement to the formation of seamen.
2. In 1790 the duty on salt was doubled: it was raised from six
to twelve cents a bushel: by the same act the fishing bounties
and allowances were also doubled: they were raised from five to
ten cents the barrel and the quintal. By this act the bounties
and allowances both to fish and provisions, were described to be
"in lieu of drawback of the duty on salt used in curing fish and
provisions exported."
3. The act of 1792 repeals "the bounty in lieu of drawback on dried
fish;" and, "in lieu of that, and as commutation thereof, and as an
equivalent therefor," shifts the bounty from the "quintal" of dried
fish to the "tonnage" of the fishing vessel; and changes its name
from "bounty" to "allowance." This is the key act to the present
system of tonnage allowance to the fishing vessel; and was passed
upon the petition of the fishermen, and to enable the "crew" of
the vessel to draw the bounty instead of letting it fall into the
hands of the exporting merchant. It was done upon the fishermen's
petition, and for the benefit of the crew, interested in the
adventure, and who had paid the duty on the salt which they used.
And to exclude all idea of considering this change as a change of
policy, and to cut off all inference that the allowance was now
to become a bounty from the Treasury as an encouragement for a
seaman's nursery, the act went on to make this precise and explicit
declaration: "_That the allowance so granted to the fishing vessel
was a commutation of, and an equivalent for, the bounty in lieu of
drawback of the duties imposed on the importation of the salt used
in curing the fish exported._" This is plain language--the plain
language used by legislators of that day--and defies misconception,
misunderstanding, or cavil.
4. In 1797 the duty on salt was raised from twelve cents to twenty
cents a bushel: by the same act a corresponding increase was made in
the bounties both to exported salted provisions and pickled fish,
and in the allowance to the fishing vessels. The salt duty was
raised one-third and a fraction: and these bounties and allowances
were raised one-third. Thirty-three and one-third per cent. was
added all round; and the act, to make all sure, was express in again
declaring the bounties and allowances to be a commutation in lieu of
the drawback of the salt duty.
5. The act of April 12th, 1800, continues the salt duty, and with it
all the bounties to salted provisions and pickled fish exported, and
all the allowances to fishing vessels, for ten years; and then adds
this proviso: "That these allowances shall not be understood to be
continued for a longer time than the correspondent duties on salt,
respectively, for which the said allowances were granted, shall be
payable." Such are the terms of the act of the year 1800. It is
a clincher. It nails up, and crushes every thing. It shows that
Congress was determined that the salt duty, and the bounties and
allowances, should be one and indivisible: that they should come,
and go together--should rise and fall together--should live and die
together.
6. In 1807, Mr. Jefferson being President, the salt tax was
abolished upon his recommendation: and with it all the bounties and
allowances to fishing vessels, to pickled fish, and to salted beef
and pork were all swept away. The same act abolished the whole.
The first section repealed the salt duty: the second repealed the
bounties and allowances: and the repeal of both was to take effect
on the same day--namely, on the first day of January, 1808: a day
which deserves to be nationally commemorated, as the day of the
death of an odious, criminal and impious tax. The beneficent and
meritorious act was in these words: "_That from and after the
first day of January next, so much of any act as allows a bounty
on exported salt provisions and pickled fish, in lieu of drawback
of the duties on the salt employed in curing the same, and so
much of any act as makes allowances to the owners and crews of
fishing vessels, in lieu of drawback of the duties paid on the salt
used in the same, shall be, and the same hereby is repealed._"
This was the end of the first salt tax in the United States, and
of all the bounties and allowances built upon it. It fell, with
all its accessories, under the republican administration of Mr.
Jefferson--and with the unanimous vote of every republican--and also
with the vote of many federalists: so much more favorable were the
old federalists than the whigs of this day, to the interests of the
people. In fact there were only five votes against the repeal, and
not one of these upon the ground that the bounties and allowances
were independent of the salt duty.
7. After this, and for six years, there was no salt tax--no fishing
bounties or allowances in the United States. The tax, and its
progeny lay buried in one common grave, and had no resurrection
until the year 1813. The war with Great Britain revived them--the
tax and its offspring together; but only as a temporary measure--as
a war tax--to cease within one year after the termination of the
war. Before that year was out, the tax, and its appendages were
continued--not for any determinate period, but until repealed by
Congress. They have not been repealed yet! and that was forty years
ago! No act could then have been obtained to continue this duty
for the short space of three years. The continuance could only be
obtained on the argument that Congress could then repeal it at any
time; a fallacious reliance, but always seductive to men of easy and
temporizing temperaments.
The pretension that these fishing bounties and allowances were
granted as encouragement to mariners, is rejected by every word
of the acts which grant them, and by the striking fact, that no
part of them goes to the whale fisheries. Not a cent of them had
ever gone to a whale ship: they had only gone to the cod and
mackerel fisheries. The noble whaler of four or five hundred
tons, with her ample crew, which sailed twenty thousand miles,
doubling a most tempestuous cape before she arrived at the field
of her labors--which remained out three years, waging actual war
with the monsters of the deep--a war in which a brave heart,
a steady eye, and an iron nerve were as much wanted as in any
battle with man;--this noble whaler got nothing. It all went to
the hook-and-line men--to the cod and mackerel fisheries, which
were carried on in diminutive vessels, as small as five tons, and
in the rivers, and along the shores, and on the shallow banks of
Newfoundland. Meritorious as these hook-and-line fishermen might be,
they cannot compare with the whalers: and these whalers receive no
bounties and allowances because they pay no duty on imported salt,
re-exported by them.
I now come to the clause in my bill which has called forth these
preliminary remarks; the third clause, which proposes the reduction
of fishing bounties and allowances in proportion to the reduction
which the salt tax has undergone, and shall undergo. And here, it
is not the compromise act alone that is to be blamed: a previous
act shares that censure with it. In 1830 the salt duty was reduced
one-half, to take effect in 1830 and 1831; the fishing bounties
and allowances should have been reduced one-half at the same time.
I made the motion in the Senate to that effect; but it failed of
success. When the compromise act was passed in 1833, and provided
for a further reduction of the salt duty--a reduction which has
now reduced it two-thirds, and in 1841 and '42 will reduce it
still lower--when this act was passed, a reduction of the fishing
bounties and allowances should have taken place. The two senators
who concocted that act in their chambers, and brought it here to be
registered as the royal edicts were registered in the times of the
old French monarchy; when these two senators concocted this act,
they should have inserted a provision in it for the correspondent
reduction of the fishing bounties and allowances with the salt tax:
they should have placed these allowances, and the refined sugar,
and the rum drawbacks, all on the same footing, and reduced them
all in proportion to the reduction of the duties on the articles
on which they were founded. They did not do this. They omitted the
whole; with what mischief you have already seen in the case of
rum and refined sugar, and shall presently see in the case of the
fishing bounties and allowances. I attempted to supply a part of
their omission in making the motion in relation to drawbacks, which
was read to you at the commencement of these remarks. Failing in
that motion, I made no further attempt, but waited for TIME, the
great arbiter of all questions, to show the mischief, and to enforce
the remedy. That arbiter is now here, with his proofs in his hand,
in the shape of certain reports from the Treasury Department in
relation to the salt duty and the fishing bounties and allowances,
which have been printed by the order of the Senate, and constitute
part of the salt document, No. 196. From that document I now
proceed to collect the evidences of one branch of the mischief--the
pecuniary branch of it--which the omission to make the proper
reductions in these allowances has inflicted upon the country.
The salt duty was reduced one-fourth in the year 1831; the fishing
bounties and allowances that year were $313,894; they should have
been reduced one-fourth also, which would have made them about
$160,000. In 1832 the duty was reduced one-half; the fishing
bounties and allowances were paid in full, and amounted to $234,137;
they should have been reduced one-half; and then $117,018 would have
discharged them. The compromise act was made in 1833, and, under
the operation of that act, the salt duty has undergone biennial
reductions, until it is now reduced to about one-third of its
original amount: if it had provided for the correspondent reduction
of the fishing bounties and allowances, there would have been saved
from that year to the year 1839--the last to which the returns have
been made up--an annual average sum of about $150,000, or a gross
sum of about $900,000. The prospective loss can only be estimated;
but it is to increase rapidly, owing to the large reductions in the
salt duty in the years 1841 and 1842.
The present year, 1840, lacks but a little of exhausting the whole
amount of the salt revenue in paying the fishing bounties and
allowances; the next year will take more than the whole; and the
year after will require about double the amount of the salt revenue
of that year to be taken from other branches of the revenue to
satisfy the demands of the fishing vessels: thus producing the same
result as in the case of the sugar duties--the whole amount of the
salt duty, and as much more out of other duties, being paid to the
cod and mackerel fishermen, as the whole amount of the sugar tax,
and considerably more, is paid to the sugar-refiners. The results
for the present year, and the ensuing ones, are of course computed:
they are computations founded upon the basis of the last ascertained
year's operations. The last year to which all the heads of this
branch of business is made up, is the year 1838; and for that year
they stand thus: Salt imported, in round numbers, seven millions of
bushels; net revenue from it, about $430,000; fishing bounties and
allowances, $320,000. Assuming the importation of the present year
to be the same, and the bounties and allowances to be the same,
the loss to the Treasury will be $206,000; for the salt duty this
year will undergo a further reduction. In 1842, when this duty has
reached its lowest point, the whole amount of revenue derived from
it is computed at about $170,000, while the fishing bounties and
allowances continuing the same, namely, about $320,000, the salt
revenue in the gross will be little more than half enough to pay
it; and, after deducting the weighers' and measurers' fees, which
come out of the Treasury, and amount to $52,500 on an importation
of seven millions; after deducting this item, there will be a
deficiency of about $200,000 in the salt revenue, in meeting the
drawbacks, in the shape of bounties and allowances founded upon it.
Thus two-thirds of the whole amount of the salt revenue is at this
time paid to the fishing vessels. Next year it will all go to them;
and after 1842, we shall have to raise money from other sources to
the amount of $200,000 per annum, or raise the salt duty itself to
produce that amount, in order to satisfy these drawbacks, which were
permitted to take the form of bounties and allowances to fishing
vessels. Such is the operation of the compromise act! that act which
is styled sacred and inviolable!
Of the other mischiefs resulting from this compromise act, which
reduced the duties on salt, and the one which preceded it for the
same purpose, without reducing the correspondent bounties and
allowances to the fishing interest--of these remaining mischiefs,
whereof there are many, I mean to mention but one; and merely
to mention that, and not to argue it. It is the constitutional
objection to the payment of any thing beyond the duty received--the
payment of any thing which exceeds the drawback of the duty. Up to
that point, I admit the constitutionality of drawbacks, whether
passing under that name, or changed to the name of a bounty, or an
allowance in lieu of a drawback. I admit the constitutional right
of Congress to permit a drawback of the amount paid in: I deny the
constitutional right to permit a drawback of any amount beyond what
was paid in. This is my position, which I pledge myself to maintain,
if any one disputes it; and applying this principle to the fishing
bounties and allowances, and also to the drawbacks in the case of
refined sugars and rum: and I boldly affirm that the constitution of
the United States has been in a state of flagrant violation, under
the compromise act, from the day of its passage to the present hour,
and will continue so until the bill is passed which I am about to
ask leave to bring in.
Sir, I quit this part of my subject with presenting, in a single
picture, the condensed view of what I have been detailing. It
is, that the whole annual revenue derived from sugar, salt, and
molasses, is delivered over gratuitously to a few thousand persons
in a particular section of the Union, and is not even sufficient to
satisfy their demands! In other words, that a tax upon a nation
of seventeen millions of people, upon three articles of universal
consumption, articles of necessity, and of comfort, is laid for the
benefit of a few dozen rum distillers and sugar refiners, and a few
thousand fishermen; and not being sufficient for them, the deficit,
amounting to many hundred thousand dollars per annum, is taken from
other branches of the revenue, and presented to them! and all this
the effect of an act which was made out of doors, which was not
permitted to be amended on its passage, and which is now held to
be sacred and inviolable! and which will eventually sink under its
own iniquities, though sustained now by a cry which was invented
by knavery, and is repeated by ignorance, folly, and faction--a
cry that that compromise saved the Union. This is the picture I
present--which I prove to be true--and the like of which is not to
be seen in the legislation, or even in the despotic decrees, of
arbitrary monarchs, in any other country upon the face of the earth.
About five millions of dollars have been taken from the Treasury
under these bounties and allowances--the greater part of it most
unduly and abusefully.[3] The fishermen are only entitled to an
amount equal to the duty paid on the imported salt, which is
used upon that part of the fish which is exported; and the law
requires not only the exportation to be proved, but the landing and
remaining of the cargo in a foreign country. They draw back this
year $355,000. Do they pay that amount of duty on the salt put on
the modicum of fish which they export? Why, it is about the entire
amount of the whole salt tax paid by the whole United States! and to
justify their right to it, they must consume on the exported part
of their fish the whole quantity of foreign salt now imported into
the United States--leaving not a handful to be used by the rest of
the population, or by themselves on that part of their fish which
is consumed at home--and which is so much greater than the exported
part. This shows the enormity of the abuse, and that the whole
amount of the salt tax now goes to a few thousand fishermen; and if
this compromise act is not corrected, that whole amount, after 1842,
will not be sufficient to pay this small class--not equal in number
to the farmers in a common Kentucky county; and other money must be
taken out of the Treasury to make good the deficiency. I have often
attempted to get rid of the whole evil, and render a great service
to the country, by repealing _in toto_ the tax and all the bounties
and allowances erected upon it. At present I only propose, and that
without the least prospect of success, to correct a part of the
abuse, by reducing the payments to the fishermen in proportion to
the reduction of the duty on salt: but the true remedy is the one
applied under Mr. Jefferson's administration--total repeal of both.
[3] About four and a quarter millions taken since; and still taking.