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present data to establish with precision; but it is certainly short of the truth to state it to be an average increase of 7½ per cent. Thus making the present duty to average at least 45 per cent. which on $37,000,000 the amount of our share of the exports will give the sum of 16,650,000 as our share of the general contributions to the Treasury.
Let us take another and perhaps more simple and striking view of this important point. Exports and imports must be equal in a series of years⟨.⟩ This is a principle universally conceded. Let it then be supposed for the purpose of illustration, that the United States were organized. into two separate and distinct Custom House establishments; one for the staple states, and the other for the rest of the Union; and that all commercial intercourse between the two sections were taxed, in the same manner and to the same extent with that now imposed on the commerce with the rest of the world. The foreign commerce under the circumstances supposed, would be carried on from each section, direct with the rest of the world; and the imports of the Southern Custom House establishment, on the principle, that imports and exports must be equal, would amount annually to $37,000,000, which at 45 per cent. the average amount of the impost duty would give an annual revenue of $16,650,000, without increasing the burden on the people of these states one cent. This would be the amount of the revenue on the exchange of that portion of their products, which go abroad; but if we take into the estimate the duty which would accrue on the exchange of the products with the manufacturing states, which now in reality is paid by the southern states in the shape of increased prices, as a bounty to the manufactories, but which on the supposition would be paid, as a part of their revenue at the Custom House, many millions more would have to be added.
But it is contended that the consumers really pay the impost, and, as the manufacturing states consume a full share, in proportion to their population, of the articles imported, they must also contribute their full share to the Treasury of the Union. The committee will not deny that the consumers pay the duties, and will take it for granted that the consumption of imported articles is in proportion to population. The manufacturing states however, indemnify themselves, and more than indemnify themselves for the increased price, they pay on the articles they consume, as has already been proved, by their confession, in a form which cannot deceive, by their own acts. Nor is it difficult to trace the operation by which it is effected. The very acts of Congress imposing burdens on them, as consumers, give them the means, through the monopoly which it affords the manufacturers in the home market, not only of indemnifying themselves
