35TH CONG....1ST SESS.

the earnings of freight and insurance. If he brings that $40,000-and many of our imports are in coin as well as in goods-to New York, of course he has sent $50,000 out and brings but $40,000 back, and he has lost $10,000. That must be perfectly clear. The Senator, however, seems to think not, but says he must bring back something to pay the duty. Well, now, instead of bringing back the $40,000 for which he sold the cotton in Liverpool, suppose he lays out the money in British goods at Manchester. If he has only got $40,000 there to buy goods with, and he carried out $50,000, he has lost $10,000, and all the earnings of freight and insurance. There can be no mistake about that. Inasmuch as you take the valuation at Liverpool, I take that test. He sells the cotton for money and puts the money into goods. If he brings back but $40,000 of goods, he does a losing trade. I have shown you It is not a losing trade, but the custom-house exhibiting only $40,000 of import for that export of $50,000, it necessarily follows either that there was undervaluation, or that the trade must have been a losing one. If the merchant laid out the $50,000 in Liverpool in goods he would be even, though he lost insurance and freight and profit; but if he sold his cotton for $60,000, then whether he put it in blankets or hats or cottons, or anything else, the invoices must show $60,000 worth of goods exported from Liverpool to New York.

I say, then, it is an unerring test, that unless the imports do equal the exports, you have either done a losing trade, the commerce of the country has lost, or the goods are undervalued, and there is no escape from it. There were two elements which I stated that might have an effect on the calculation, and I called on the Senator from Virginia to name any others, if he could; but, after forty-eight hours, he has not been able to give another. I said it was subject to these modifications: first, the amount of goods that went abroad to pay for interest on loans; and another element to set off against that was the amount of money borrowed in the three years to carry on our improvements. If as many new bonds were issued as paid the interest on previous loans, that would not appear in the statement of the account, but it would be squared. There is no other element to disturb the calculation, except smuggling, and that I allowed for. I showed that there were $70,000,000 against us, and I allowed $20,000,000 for loss by smuggling. It was a large estimate; I think an excessive one. Then I showed that the undervaluation must amount to at least fifty million dollars a year. Then, if you put the earnings of freight, and insurance, and the profits of business on an exportation of $300,000,000, at twenty per cent., you would have $60,000,000, or an annual excess of exports over imports of $10,000,000 more, making $70,000,000; and if the profits, insurance, and freights were more than twenty per cent. the amount would go up to eighty or perhaps one hundred millions. The more profitable the trade, the greater the amount of undervaluation there must necessarily be. If cotton sold for one hundred per cent. advance; if the $50,000,000 exportation sold for $100,000,000, and the customhouse only showed $40,000,000 of imports in return, there was an undervaluation of $60,000,000; and no figures, no logic of my friend from Virginia, can get around it. He has committed the singular blunder of supposing that you may do a good business, and yet bring in fewer goods in value, buy less goods-and it will be the same, whether you take goods or money, and I will take the case of money. Suppose we export $100,000 in gold, and that we buy with it $90,000 in goods, what becomes of the other $10,000? Much of our export consists in gold-forty or fifty millions. Suppose it had all been gold, and we sent to Liverpool from New York $60,000,000, and brought in $40,000,000 of goods: then it would be absolutely certain that we had lost precisely $20,000,000, unless there was a duty on gold in Liverpool, for the gold did not lose anything in going across the Atlantic ocean. Suppose our whole exportation of $300,000,000 had been in gold, we should have received in return $300,000,000 in goods valued in Liverpool; and if it brought in imports to a less amount than three hundred million dollars, it is clear there was a loss in the

Internal Improvements-Mr. Toombs.

trade, and the Senator cannot account for it in any other way on the best settled principles of political economy. An old idea once obtained that a nation which imported more than she exported was getting in debt, and I believe some people who write on these subjects in newspapers now have that singular idea. I say, on the other hand, it is an unfailing test of prosperity. If you bring in no more than the avails of what you send out, if it is $100,000,000, it shows $100,000,000 of prosperous trade, but if you go in debt beyond the price of your commodities at the place you sell them, that is another matter. But I say that the basis which I went upon to show undervaluation is correct. The element the Senator has put in to-day does not exist, and he can find no other than the one of smuggling, for which I have made a liberal allowance.

SENATE.

the increased expenditures? I have a right to know them when I am called upon for a loan. But, sir, I totally dissent from gentlemen on this side of the House. I do not intend to borrow this money, and I mean to reduce the public expenditures. I do not intend to falsify the policy which I adopted with my honorable friend from Virginia fifteen months ago. I believe that the present tariff levies taxes enough, and I do not intend to vote for any more, or to pay any more. I am pursuing my own policy, and I do not intend to be diverted from it by anybody. It is sound policy. I do not intend to spend more than this tariff yields in ordinary circumstances, but I would provide for extraordinary deficiencies or extraordinary disbursements. I will not deviate from that principle until I am satisfied it is wrong; and if it is wrong, the Senator from Virginia ought not to have brought in a loan bill, but a measure for increasing the revenue. If we are not to bring down our expenditures to what the tariff will yield under ordinary circumstances, we ought to raise taxation, because it is unwise and unstatesmanlike to carry your expenditures to $80,000,000 and leave your revenue at $50,000,000, for that policy will compel you to borrow the sum of $30,000,000 a year. I will not do so great violence to all correct and sound principles of gov erning a great country as to do any such thing. If your ordinary expenditures have gone beyond your estimates for ordinary revenue, you ought to raise your taxes. As I do not intend to do it, as I do not intend that the revenue shall go beyond it, I make my opposition on your appropriation bills, and will leave those gentlemen who

On the other questions which have been raised, I agree with the principles laid down by my honorable friend from Virginia. I was opposed to the loan bill because it was opposed to my principles; and I think it ought to have been opposed to his. At the last session of Congress, when the tariff of 1857 was made, we estimated that, upon the then importations, it would produce but $48,000,000. We calculated to reduce taxes $15,000,000. I voted for it because it did reduce taxes to that extent. I intended, of course, as a corollary to the raising of only $48,000,000, that I would not spend more than forty-eight million dollars, with what should be raised from lands and miscellaneous sources, amounting in all to some fifty-five million dollars. I am not willing to go beyond this, except that I am ready to supply any diminution of the revenue occasioned by ex-vote to carry the ordinary expenses up to eighty traordinary causes. Such a diminution exists to the extent of $7,000,000. Owing to the commercial revulsion we have this year a revenue of $41,000,000, instead of $48,000,000, which we estimated when we passed that bill. I say that $7,000,000 is a legitimate subject for a loan. I would also borrow for extraordinary expenditures like the Utah war. We have appropriated $9,000,000 for the Utah war, and borrowed the money. There is $7,000,000 deficiency in the revenue, and $9,000,000 for the Utah war to be pro-asmuch as your estimates upon which you predvided, making $16,000,000; and the Government has already had authority to borrow $20,000,000 by Treasury notes-$4,000,000 more than ought to be wanted.

Mr. HUNTER. My friend is not to confine the expenses of the Utah war to the deficiency bill; because, after we have got the whole Army concentrated into Utah valley we have to supply them; and the expenses of transporting and subsisting them will be much greater than it would be if they were differently posted. That causes a great portion of the expenses.

Mr. TOOMBS. My principle is that I will provide for extraordinary expenses, though I do not approve the policy, and for extraordinary diminution of the revenue; but it has not been shown, there is no exhibition of the honorable Senator at the head of the Committee on Finance of this body, that the extraordinary expenses and deficiencies amount to $35,000,000; and that is the only true basis of calculation for a loan. If he had shown that the object of the $20,000,000 loan in the early part of the session, and the $15,000,000 now, was to make up a deficiency of the estimated revenue, and to provide for extraordinary expenses, and had shown that $35,000,000 would be needed for these purposes, then the loan bills would be legitimate and proper; but, in my judgment, the chairman of the Committee on Finance has not shown that there is any extraordinary expenditures calling for this loan. I have no idea that the extraordinary expenditures of the Army, now that we have peace in Utah, will go to $15,000,000; or, if they should, I trust there will be wisdom enough in the executive department of this Government to stop it, and turn the Army back. Colonel Steptoe was there with a portion of the Army two or three years ago, on the old estimates. He was offered, by President Pierce, the Governorship of that Territory, and he very wisely declined it. We have had armies there before. It may be expedient to keep some addition to their number, but it will not do to

say that because there are increased expenditures

we must allow any amount of loan. What are

or ninety million dollars to raise the money to pay them. I will not do it. I think gentlemen on the other side of the House who go for en. larging the expenditures of the Government are bound to provide for them by taxation or by loans; but that is not their policy.

The amendment of my honorable friend from Virginia is a wise one to this bill-not the wisest, because an increase of taxation in some form would be the wisest, but it is the next wisest. In

icated the $15,000,000 loan do not include this amount of $600,000, of course it is but the dictate of common sense and common honesty to raise the money which you appropriate. The revenue will not do it, according to anybody's calculation. The existing loans will not do it. The Administration only estimate what they mean to spend, according to existing laws, and this is not in their estimate. Then, when you appropriate these $600,000, or any other amount, for these objects, statesmanship, patriotism, and duty demand that he who votes to expend the money, ought, in some way, to provide it. The Secretary of the Treasury cannot pay the money merely be cause you appropriate it; and I cast no censure on him. He finds the appropriations of the past year seventy or eighty million dollars, and the revenue only $41,000,000; and yet gentlemen turn round and reproach him when he has asked loans to pay your appropriations. You tell him to pay, out of $50,000,000, the amount of $80,000,000. You ap propriate $80,000,000, and then turn round and say, what a Secretary of the Treasury we have got; he comes to us for two loans in one Congress! Yes, sir; and he will come for another one next week, if you pass some of the bills on the table, that I reckon will get the vote of nearly every gentleman here who is opposed to these loans. They do not carry their opposition to appropria tions. I can name a pension bill that has been started in the other House-perhaps it is here by this time-amounting to $11,000,000; I can name the French spoliation bill, involving $5,000,000; I could name three or four other bills, which, you pass before the adjournment, it will be the duty of the Secretary of the Treasury, as a states man and a patriot, to come to you next week for a loan of $20,000,000 more.

Sir, the difficulty lies here in the legislative department. It is folly, it is unmanly, it is un statesmanlike to say you will carry the expendi ture to eighty or ninety or one hundred millions, by taxation, and then vote against loan bills. Genwhile you levy no more than fifty million dollars tlemen can never bring down expenditures in that

35TH CONG....1ST SESS.

sidered. I further said to my honorable friend from Virginia, that if it was the disposition of the ruling powers of the country, at this time, to correct the frauds by undervaluations, and really to supply the wants of the Treasury according to the fair interpretation of the existing law, and it was unconstitutional to bring forward such a measure here, why was it not done in the House of Representatives? I consider that the strongest statement, looking at it in a party point of view, stronger than any other part of the state- || ment I made.

I had not time to arrange my thoughts, or even to take any notes with such order and precision that I could present them clearly and satisfactorily to the Senate; but still I went into some argument to show that it was impossible in the nature of things that the productive capacity of this country could have increased so extraordinarily as to have justified the great increase of our importations from 1857 to this time, an average increase of $15,000,000 per annum. It was impossible in the nature of things, as I conceive, that this could have been a healthy increase. I know there were one or two years of high prices produced by the state of things in Europe when we got more for our produce and breadstuffs on account of short crops abroad; but that is an inconsiderable item of the large increase from 1847 to 1857. In 1857, the imports were one hundred and sixty or one hundred and seventy millions more than they were ten years ago. I say the ability to buy articles has not increased with that rapidity, and the inference which I wished to draw from all this was, that the gentleman who had charge of the finances of the Government ought to have seen it.

Internal Improvements-Mr. Davis.

increasing the impositions upon the articles of imported merchandise.

Mr. HUNTER. I said nothing about the poor. I spoke of the consumers. The consumers embrace poor and rich.

Mr. BELL. I understand; but then the hon. orable Senator alluded to the appeal made on account of the suffering portion of the community now thrown out of employment, and said, "how could that be, when you take from one class, by imposing protective duties, to put into the pockets of the capitalists, those who are not suffering?" He said you increase the means of the capitalists and you throw the burden on the unemployed, the poor, the toiling millions. The honorable Senator from Virginia and the honorable Senator from Georgia do not differ much when we come to discuss that point. It is in that odious point of view that the arguments of some of the gentlemen on this side of the Chamber are held up and presented before the country. My own judgment on the subject is, that unless you lay a duty so great as to prohibit the importation of articles, the effect of duties affording protection to a reasonable extent on the great bulk of manufactured articles that come in conflict with similar articles which we have the raw material and the skill and knowledge to manufacture here, diminish prices in the end, and that the capitalist, after all, can receive only a reasonable remunerative price or interest on his capital, such as all other employments justify. I will not detain the Senate further.

Mr. DAVIS. I should like to ask the Senator from Tennessee a question: how the proposed modification of the manner of collecting the duties would entirely avoid the danger of fraud? He alleges fraud to exist now, and to some extent, no doubt, it does. I wish to know how he is going to avoid it; how the proposed plan will do

it?

Mr. BELL. I will answer to the best of my knowledge and judgment. You cannot altogether avoid frauds by a change in the mode of valuation. Frauds will continue to exist, to some extent, under any system. I only pretend to say that they must more exceedingly abound under the present practice of the Government in collect

In reference to the currency, I mean to say nothing now. I shall not go into the question of the exportation of specie, because the honorable Senator has not alluded to it; and what I am now saying I wish to be strictly in reply to him. My argument was intended to show that if he would give the proper weight and consideration to this large increase of our importations in the last ten years, he would see that much of it was founded upon credit; it was artificial; it was not a true index of the ability of the country either to buying revenue than could possibly be the case in or to pay; and that when he relied upon a revival of trade and business in this country on the figures of 1855, 1856, and 1857, his calculations would never be realized, and he had better make provision at once for an increased revenue. I think, upon a fair and deliberate consideration of the facts I have presented, any man will see that they furnish no grounds of faith that this country will, within any short period, reach a similar condition of prosperity so far as it is indicated by the amount of merchandise imported.

Another thing I threw in-an appeal to the good feelings and sympathies of men-an appeal to which, as I pointed out, the English Government was ever ready to respond. I thought we might fairly adopt the proposition of the Senator from Rhode Island, as providing the means of paying the debt proposed to be contracted and supplying the Treasury next year; for the Senator from Virginia himself does not pretend to say that he calculates with any certainty that the ordinary receipts of the revenue will pay the expenditures of the next year, and I pointed to the fact that at the close of the next year you would have a public debt of more than seventy or eighty million dollars. Looking back to the circumstances to which I have already alluded as to the character of our trade, I thought we all ought at once to perceive that there was no good sense or wisdom in delaying for a year or two to see whether business would revive. I thought the evidence was conclusive, that it could not and would not, to such an extent as would meet the wants of the Government; and hence, I thought we might as well, at once, relieve the country to the extent that such a measure would relieve those who have been thrown out of employment, by increasing the imposts upon imported merchandise coming in conflict with the domestic produce of the country. The honorable Senator from Virginia has drawn into his short argument, made to-day, that ad captandum-I will not call it by any less dignified name-appeal which is made on such occasions about the injustice done to the poor by

||

collecting revenue under the system of home val uation. Of course there may be a difference between the judgment of appraisers in one port and another. One proposition is to fix New York as a standard. I have conversed with the honorable Senator from Virginia on this subject heretofore, and he asked me how you would fix a value in any one port that would be equally just in California? I replied that, if the standard was fixed at New York, and the effeet should be that we lost in the revenue in regard to the goods consumed in California, the consequence would be that the importing merchant and consumers in California would pay less duty.

Mr. DAVIS. It might be more.

Mr. BELL. It might be more according to the principles on which you base the calculation, but now they would pay a less duty in San Francisco by the New York standard. I presume the standard would be fixed at the wholesale market value at New York. You might make some deductions one way or the other, if you thought proper; but that is the idea and the principle. When you take goods from New York to California, the cost of freight and transportation from New York to California adds to their value; and then, when you require the merchants and consumers in California to pay duty only by the New York standard, you lessen the burden upon them. The article, || the moment it arrives there, is worth more than that standard by the cost of transportation and insurance and commissions. All that would be added; but they would pay no duty on it. That would be unfair to some extent, and might be said by some gentlemen to be contrary to the Constitution; but practically, I think, in levying revenue in a country like this, so divided as our sea-ports are, that is a matter of small consideration compared with the great importance of having our system uniform as far as practicable, and our revenues honestly raised.

Now, I will state another fact. When I was at New Orleans, some six or seven years ago and I dare say the representatives from Louisiana can

SENATE.

verify it-I learned that the merchants could then, notwithstanding the honesty of our appraisers, actually import their goods cheaper through New York. The honest merchants, who would not condescend to use false mvoices, found it was better to have their goods shipped to New York, entered there, and then reshipped to New Orleans, with all the charges of reloading, the coastwise freight, and insurance. That was a mode by which some of them continued in the trade so as to avoid the competition which they had to meet in New Orleans with merchants who imported under the custom-house invoice system.

I am not familiar with these subjects, as my friend from Mississippi very well knows. They have not been in my line at all; but I studied them to some extent when I saw that they were likely to arise here. I do not know that I have given a satisfactory answer; but I think my friend from Rhode Island could perhaps devise a scheme that would be satisfactory.

Mr. DAVIS. I think the Senator from Tennessee does himself injustice. He shows familiarity with the general principles involved, but I do not think he removes my difficulty by any means. The question which I asked presents to my mind several difficulties. In the first place, I do not see how it would be possible (to take the ports he names, San Francisco and New York) for the appraisers at San Francisco to know the value of any article of commerce in New York upon the day when it was entered in the harbor of San Francisco. The price is fluctuating, and the time is considerable between the two ports. If the price was ascending or descending, the appraisers in San Francisco would make the error just in proportion to the ascent or descent of its value in the port of New York.

Mr. BELL. That would be a practical incon

venience.

Mr. DAVIS. Then again the Senator is quite mistaken in supposing that all commerce must incur an increase of value by going to San Francisco. I think one of the great elements in the present system likely to produce discontents among the people of the Pacific coast is that we legislate entirely in relation to our duties on imports by regarding the interests of those people, who look out on the Atlantic and draw their trade across it; but the people of the Pacific coast must some day or other have a very extensive trade of an Asiatic character. Now to take an article which is already one of considerable import into the harbor of San Francisco, Chinese rice, how would an appraiser at San Francisco determine the value of Chinese rice, in the port of New York, where not one grain probably ever enters as merchandise?

Mr. BELL. That could be provided for.

Mr. DAVIS. It could not possibly. The article has no value in New York known to the appraiser. So a very large class of French goods are imported into New Orleans which find no other market in the United States. How are you to fix a New York standard for measuring these goods which are never imported into New York? It is impossible. And if you could reach it, if goods of Asiatic production should enter into New York and become matter of merchandise there and acquire value there, would it be fair to impose upon an importer in San Francisco the increase of value of those goods when they should have been carried around the Cape and on a stormy sea to the port of New York? It would be manifestly unjust, manifestly injurious to the trade of those people who look out upon the Pacific and not on the Atlantic.

I think, therefore, that, whilst we are met at the first step with the difficulty, at last you must rely on the intelligence and integrity of the appraisers, as you do now; and, secondly, that, by such a regulation as is proposed, you give a preference to one port over another, making it the interest of the merchant to do that which the Senator from Tennessee finds that, in some cases, the merchant in New Orleans now does-making it always his interest to import into New York; having no additional charge of duty when he arrives at New Orleans, if he brings the goods from New York; but having an additional charge if he brings them from elsewhere. It is to create a preference for that port over the others, necessarily;

35TH CONG....1ST SESS.

it is to rely, at least, upon the integrity and intelligence of appraisers, and compelling them to measure by a standard which does not appeal to their general commercial knowledge, but their capacity to guess whether the value of the article has gone up or down at the port where the standard is fixed, between the date of the last pricecurrent and the date of the delivery of the goods at the port of entry. It seems to me to have all the difficulties, and to be liable to all the frauds-————

Mr. BELL. Permit me to ask the honorable Senator a question. Is there any other civilized trading nation in the world that has duties paid on its importations on their foreign valuation, or that ever did such a thing? Do not foreign nations lay the duty on the valuation in the port in which the goods arrive?

Mr. DAVIS. I am not able to answer the question.

Mr. BELL. I do not pretend to have a perfect knowledge on the subject; but my understanding is, that this is the only country that levies its duties on a foreign valuation.

Mr. SIMMONS. My proposition-of which the Senator from Mississippi is complaining-had a provision in it to meet just such cases at he has presented. It provided that, when the duty could not be ascertained in any other way, the collector might take it in kind, and sell it in the market. In that way you could certainly get your percentage. I should like to see how the Senator can get over that?

Mr. DAVIS. My objection is, that I am afraid the appraisers would ascertain it to suit themselves. You would have one great central commercial metropolis, from which you would send out agents, trained in the one great custom-house of the country, to apply their own notions and their own standard to every port of the United States.

Mr. SIMMONS. Those are provisions to get rid of the abstractions which have been thrown in the way of a home valuation. I think that is perfectly constitutional

Mr. SEWARD. I wish to ask my honorable friend from Rhode Island whether this has much to do necessarily with the river and harbor bills?

Mr. SIMMONS. Not at all; but I thought perhaps I could get along better by explaining exactly what I proposed.

Mr. DAVIS. I am objecting to the abstraction of money from the pockets of the importers of every other part of the United States for the benefit of the one great central metropolis of commerce. I am objecting to a scheme which is to swell the number of your custom-house officers, and to give them a larger discretionary power than they now have.

Mr. BELL. Let me ask my friend from Mississippi what effect the fraudulent system of undervaluation, in the city of New York, had on New Orleans? That is one of the grounds on which I felt excited and interested on the subject ever since I made the examination to which I have referred some years ago at New Orleans. I saw that the consequence of the system of undervaluation was to make New York the objectionable entrepôt of which the Senator from Mississippi speaks-the great emporium of trade in this country. That is one of my very grounds of objection to the present system. I ask my friend from Mississippi whether it would not be a much more easy task, on the part of the Government here, to see, supervise, and exercise a patriotic spirit in consulting the most honest and skillful officers in a single port than a dozen ports, as we have to do now?

Mr. DAVIS. The Senator presents me the objection that the New York standard is taken for the importer at New Orleans, and yet he proposes to take the New York standard at every port.

Mr. BELL. What I mean to say is, that I contemplated a different standard of men in New York, though I am told the present officers are very good. Mr. Schell, I have not heard complaint of.

Mr. DAVIS. I sympathise in the hope the Senator has on the perfectibility of man, but I hardly expect to find the full development of perfectibility in the midst of a custom-house. I think the Senator is mistaken in the case to which he refers. A large number of the mercantile houses in New Orleans are branches, having still larger

Mr. DAVIS. Oh, no.

The VICE PRESIDENT. The question is on the amendment of the Senator from Virginia [Mr. HUNTER] to the amendment of the Senator from Ohio, [Mr. PUGH.]

The Secretary proceeded to call the roll; but before the result was announced

Mr. WILSON. I vote "nay" on this question to satisfy others, not myself.

Mr. FITCH. I was not in when this amendment was moved, but I previously notified the Presiding Officer that I had paired off with the Senator from Louisiana [Mr. BENJAMIN] on all questions relating to river and harbor improvement bills-a general pair on these bills. If that involves this question likewise, I shall not vote. If it does not, and is so decided, I am willing, as I understand my vote will affect the question materially, to do what other Senators say is proper.

Mr. SEWARD. The honorable Senator from Louisiana consulted me about pairing off, he being a friend of the bills, and told me he had paired off with the honorable Senator from Indiana. The friends of the bills understand that this is a vote which is covered by the pair.

Mr. FITCH. If there is any doubt whatever about it, I shall decline voting."

The result was announced-yeas 24, nays 26; as follows:

YEAS-Messrs. Allen, Bright, Brown, Clay, Clingman, Davis, Fitzpatrick, Gwin, Hammond, Hayne, Houston, Hunter, Iverson, Johnson of Tennessee, Mailory, Mason,

Pearce, Polk, Reid, Rice, Slidell, Thomson of New Jersey,

Toombs, and Wright-24.

NAYS-Messrs. Bell, Bigler, Broderick, Chandler, Collamer, Crittenden, Dixon, Douglas, Durkee, Fessenden, Foot, Foster, Hale, Harlan, Jones, Kennedy, King, Pugh, Sebastian, Seward, Shields, Simmons, Stuart, Trumbull, Wade, and Wilson-26.

So the amendment to the amendment was rejected.

Mr. DAVIS. I move an amendment to the amendment:

That all articles now on the free list be classed among the unenumerated articles, and be charged with a duty of twenty per cent. ad valorem, on all importations made after the 1st day of July, 1858.

Mr. PUGH. I ask the President whether he considers that amendment in order? It proposes to raise revenue, to originate a bill in this House

to increase the tariff.

Mr. DAVIS. It is a question which the Senate had before it yesterday. Mr. PUGH. It is not the same by a great

ways.

Mr. DAVIS. I do not know on which side the Senator from Ohio was, on the point of order raised by the Senator from Virginia.

Mr. PUGH. The answer then made by several Senators was, that they did not propose to raise the duties at all, but simply to affect the measure of valuation. I did not care anything about the constitutional question then, because I was against the home valuation anyhow; but here is a provision to raise duties, the origination of which by the Senate is unconstitutional.

Mr. DAVIS. It is a modification of the scale of duty. It certainly will increase the revenue. Until I was compelled to surrender to the better

SENATE.

judgment of the Senate, I thought the origination of any bill which proposed to increase the reve nue of the country by duties on imports was assuming a power not delegated to the Senate; but a large majority seemed to be against that construction the other day, and I am but bowing, as I always do, to the judgment of the Senate. Mr. KING. I ask for the yeas and nays on the amendment.

The VICE PRESIDENT. The Chair will submit the question of order, if any Senator desires it, to the sense of the Senate.

Mr. WILSON. I would rather take this vote on the point of order. We took it on the princi pal question yesterday-not on the point of order.

The VICE PRESIDENT. The Senator from Massachusetts desires the question of order submitted to the Senate. The Chair will submit it: Is this amendment in order? Senators who think the amendment is in order will say "ay."

Mr. CRITTENDEN. I wish to know if the question should not properly be put, "Is this amendment constitutional?" That is the question. It is alleged to be out of order, because it is unconstitutional. I want to know if that is the specific question-whether it is constitutional? The VICE PRESIDENT. The Chair will state

Mr. SLIDELL. I would suggest to the Vice President that I understood, if the point of order had not been waived yesterday, it was the intention of the Chair to have propounded the question to the Senate, "Will the Senate receive the amendment?" That was my impression, and I understood that was the usual form, when the Chair doubted whether a proposition was in order or not, in which the Chair presented it to the Senate.

The VICE PRESIDENT. The Chair indicated the other day that he would decline to decide any question of order of this character; yet, in the broad sense, it is a question of order-the precepts of the Constitution, the rules of the body, and, where they are silent, the law of Parliament, constituting the standard of our proceedings. If the point of order is raised, the Chair will submit the question to the Senate, "Is this amendment in order?" and, in his opinion, that is the appropriate mode of submitting the question.

Mr. CRITTENDEN. I know very little about the rules of order. Suppose I have just come into the Senate, knowing nothing about the rules of the body, never having read them, but I have studied the Constitution: when the question is propounded to me, "Is an amendment in order?" how should I decide it? You may have some rule, for aught I know, that regulates this matter as a ques comparing it with when I vote upon it as a ques tion of order; but, is it the Constitution that I am tion of order? Then, when I vote on the question as you are propounding it-"Is the amendment in order?"-am I to consider that there is any other rule than the Constitution by which I am to reg ulate my judgment? I do not know anything about the rules.

The VICE PRESIDENT. The Chair knows of no other rule affecting this question than the Constitution.

Mr. CRITTENDEN. Then, I understand I am to vote whether this amendment is constitutional.

Mr. MASON. I wish to say a single word, if the question is to be taken on this matter as a question of order, only as indicative of the reason of my vote. I did not at all agree the other day with Senators who thought the propriety of an amendment of this character was one to be decided as a question of order, if we look upon it as the Senator from Kentucky does, as a question under the Constitution. The Constitution declares that bills for raising revenue shall not originate in the Senate. I may think this is a bill to raise reve nue; others may think it is not a bill to raise reyenue; and our votes will be governed accordingly on it when the question is put on the amendment. I cannot perceive that the Constitution, in giving to the Senate the right to prescribe its own rules, in tended to do more than to vest the Senate, and the Presiding Officer of the Senate as the organ to ex pound the rules, with the power to prescribe what they might consider best for the dispatch of busi ness. I do not consider that the Constitution can affect the order of the Senate technically, so speak