AD VALOREM DUTIES.

As specific duties can easily be laid on almost every species of merchandise, and are adopted in Europe as the safest and only proper mode of raising revenue on imported goods, we are naturally led to inquire how it happens that the ad valorem principle was adopted in 1846. Some light is thrown upon this inquiry by the fact that all attempts to change this system, by exposing the enormous frauds to which it inevitably leads, have been entirely unsuccessful and wholly disregarded. We seem warranted in concluding, therefore, that the original design corresponded with what appears to be the present purpose, to reduce still lower, by the mode of collection, the inadequate protection afforded to American industry.

The natural result of the present system has been to turn New York into a great centre of corruption and fraud. No one can suppose that the foreign agents who swarm there from all parts of the world have any particular regard for the sanctity of customhouse oaths:

"Oaths are but words, and words but wind,

Too feeble implements to bind."

Custom-house oaths, especially, are regarded by many as but a sort of form, to be shuffled through with, and that to cheat the government of its dues is comparatively but a venial offence. Those disposed to smuggle, or, what is the same thing, swear to false and fraudulent invoices, are of course not slow to invent excuses. The government, they think, should not impose duties which fetter and impede the free course of trade. They readily adopt the argument of Hudibras, that those who impose the oaths are really the parties who break them, and not those "who, for convenience, take them." This argument, as regards our own government, has certainly great weight, it being wholly unnecessary to adopt a system by which such oaths are required. Government thus appears as a sort of particeps criminis, tempting hundreds and thousands to the commission of a crime, which crime is the defrauding of government itself. It has been demonstrated, over and over again, that such are the inevitable results of the ad valorem system, and the evidence is now lying at Washington, but lies there without attention or notice.

We must consider Congress, then, as participating deliberately in these frauds, and assuming for itself and those it represents the guilt of tempting men to crime, and that without the poor excuse of necessity, the remedy being perfectly obvious, and attended with not the slightest difficulty. However willing

unprincipled men may be to perjure themselves, is it right that we, through our agents at Washington, should be the tempters and promoters of such perjury? Shall we not draw a part of these men's guilt upon our own heads, and justly so, if we persist in a course which is certain to involve them in the commission of it? In this view of the subject it becomes a very serious matter, and of much more importance than the mere loss of revenue.

Here we find one reason why New York becomes such a great commercial centre, absorbing the business of Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Boston. The principal port of entry naturally attracts the largest number of foreign or home agents, ready to defraud the honest importers of New York and other cities, by swearing to false valuations. Goods to the value of millions of dollars are thus attracted to New York, which might otherwise be distributed to other cities. That city is thus built up at the expense of the rest of the country, and becomes a great Babel, already too large to be manageable by any system of police, corrupting itself, and corrupting the whole country around.

The only benefit flowing from free trade, or the Tariff of 1846, has been to build up the city of New York, which is naturally a great centre of importation; and this would be the case had the duties been specific, instead of ad valorem, though not, prob

ably, to the same extent. The ad valorem system comes to the assistance of free trade, both of which tend to merge all our commercial cities in a common centre. From this centre flow out streams of corruption and vice to contaminate the nation. Is it so desirable, then, that we should legislate for the purpose of swelling such an overgrown city as this at the expense of our home manufactures, national industry, and national morality?

We should abolish the ad valorem system at once, unless we wish to remain the abetters and tempters to crime, and unless we would benefit one city at the expense of all the rest. By benefiting I speak of course of an increase of wealth. That New York is benefited in any just sense by what injures the whole country is not probable. Large cities are always large sores, but particularly so in a free government like our own. We have no standing army to control and overawe such vast collections of men, drawn together from all parts of the world, with no common ties of birth, kindred or association, and with but little capacity for self-restraint, which is all the restraint they can know, and constitutes the basis on which rests the whole fabric of our government. If one half the population of New York city was distributed among the other commercial cities, such as Charleston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston, and Portland, it would be for the interest, in any just

sense of that word, of New York, as well as of the country at large. It is doubtful if a city as large as London or Paris, especially if composed of a heterogeneous population like that of New York, could exist, under institutions like our own. We must either be a law unto ourselves, or we must have a government strong enough to control us, strong enough to keep the peace, to restrain crime, and to protect property.*

* I know, writes a highly intelligent merchant, of a case in which goods, worth four thousand eight hundred francs, paid duty on twelve hundred francs only. This is probably a fair sample of the mode in which no small portion of foreign goods come into our market. Another merchant complains that, for some reason or other, the common article of molasses can be bought more advantageously in New York than in Boston. Cuban oaths he thinks of no more value than English or French. Mr. Simmons of Rhode Island recently introduced into the Senate a bill providing for home valuation instead of foreign. This is, of course, an improvement upon the present system, but by no means so simple and efficient as that of specific duties; saving, as they do, all trouble and difficulty of valuations, which can never be perfectly reliable, but must always be subject to abuse or mistake, and give rise to constant complaint. The market value in New York is not always so easily ascertained. Specific duties remove all doubt, difficulty or mistake, and constitute the only proper mode of collecting the revenue. Mr. Simmons' bill was rejected by the Senate, a result which was not unexpected.