exportation hitherto, and it is most probable that, whatever augmentation of price may have taken place, is to be attributed to an extension of the home demand, from the increase of manufactures, and to a decrease of the supply, in consequence of the progress of settlement, rather than to the quantities which have been exported.
It is mentioned, however, as an additional reason for the prohibition that one species of the bark usually exported is in some sort peculiar to the country, and the material of a very valuable dye, of great use in some other manufactures in which the United States have begun a competition.
There may also be this argument in favor of an increase of duty. The object is of importance enough to claim decisive encouragement, and the progress which has been made leaves no room to apprehend any inconvenience on the score of supply from such an increase.
It would be of benefit to this branch if glue, which is now rated at 5 per cent, were made the object of an excluding duty. It is already made in large quantities at various tanneries and, like paper, is an entire economy of materials which if not manufactured would be left to perish. It may be placed with advantage in the class of articles paying 15 per cent.
GRAIN.
Manufactures of the several species of this article have a title to peculiar favor, not only because they are, most of them, immediately connected with the subsistence of the citizens, but because they enlarge the demand for the most precious products of the soil.
Though flour may, with propriety, be noticed as a manufacture of grain, it were useless to do it but for the purpose of submitting the expediency of a general system of inspection throughout the ports of the United States which, if established upon proper principles, would be likely to improve the quality of our flour everywhere and to raise its reputation in foreign markets. There are, however, considerations which stand in the way of such an arrangement.
Ardent spirits and malt liquors are, next to flour, the two principal manufactures of grain. The first has made a very extensive, the last a considerable progress in the United States. In respect to both, an exclusive possession of the home market ought to be secured to the domestic manufacturers as fast as circumstances will admit. Nothing is more practicable and nothing more desirable.
The existing laws of the United States have done much toward attaining this valuable object; but some additions to the present duties on foreign distilled spirits and foreign malt liquors, and perhaps an abatement of those on home-made spirits, would more effectually secure it, and there does not occur any very weighty objection to either.
An augmentation of the duties on imported spirits would favor as well the distillation of spirits from molasses as that from grain. And to secure to the Nation the benefit of a manufacture, even of foreign materials, is always of great though perhaps of secondary importance.
A strong impression prevails in the minds of those concerned in distilleries (including, too, the most candid and enlightened) that greater differences in the rates of duty on foreign and domestic spirits
