The Sun.
London, England, 1840-11-10 00:00:00

IMPORT D U TIES-REVENUE.

FIRST ARTICLE.

The Report of the Committee appointed to in-
quire into the several duties levied on imports into
the United Kingdom, which we have already pub-
lished, though extremely valuable, does not give a
complete idea of the extensive and important infor-
mation which the Committee obtained from several
witnesses. As we earnestly hope that the appre-
hension of an immediate war is at an end, and that
our people will be enabled peaceably to work out
their own redemption, we shall proceed to lay before
our readers some of the most remarkable portions
of that evidence. .

Import duties are laid on for two distinct objects,
first, to provide a revenue for the State ; secondly,
to secure the producers of certain commodities from
the competition of the producers of similar commo-
dities in foreign countries. We shall, in the first
instance, confine ourselves to the case of import
duties levied for a revenue, leaving the duties levied
for the cake of protecting our own producers for
consideration hereafter. These classes of duties
rest on perfectly different principles, and must be
advocated or defended by totally different reasons.
In general it is said that there are no objections to
import duties levied fey the sake of a revenue which
make them in the abstract unwarrantable. All du-
ties indeed, take more out of the pockets of the
public than they put into the Exchequer, and give
an unnatural or fictitious direction to the employ-
ment of capital. But that is not the intention of
duties levied for a revenue, of which the object is
solely to raise as much as possible for the Exche-
quer while they taleo as little as possible from the
people.
It might be supposed, such being the clear and
definite object of duties imposed for the sake
of revenue, that those who have ordained them,
having a mere question of addition and sub-
traction to solve, and having all the talents
of the community at their command to solve it,
would not have committed a single mistake, any
more than an arithmetical teacher would make a
mistake in a common multiplication sum. The.
fact, however, is, that those who have imposed
duties for a revenue,have done it in a most bungling,
mistaken manner. The Report of the Committee
states that there are 1,158 different rates of duty
chargeable on imported articles ; and then it adds,
as if those who had framed our tariff had a settled
design to impede the commerce of a country, which
is great by its commerce, " all other articles paying
.duty as unenumerated." " The plan," says Mr.
J. D. Hume, p. 87, " has been to name, as nearly
as possible, every article which the mind of man
almost could conceive, with a particular duty attached
to it ; and then, with a view to obtain a duty upon
any article which may not have been so named, the
table winds up with two general charges, which
are known by the name of ihe unenumerated duties.
The first is a duty of 20 per cent. upon articles not
enumerated, which have undergone any degree of
manufacture ; the second is a duty of five per
cent. upon articles not enumerated, which have
undergone no degree of manufacture. Not
many years ago those two duties were, the
first 50, and the other 20 per cent.; the object
being to secure what was deemed an adequate
sum for the benefit of the revenue. Mr Hue-
kisson deemed it right to go upon a different
principle ; his object was rather to open our ports
for new commodities by lowering the duties, with
the intention of placing rated duties upon any
which might be brought in in large quantities, and
might be deemed worthy of being named in the
teriff ; but it appears to me that he did not, upon
that principle, lower the duties of either class suf-
Seiently ; and as the importation of any commodi-
ties, without an adequate duty, could soon be
stopped by imposing a just duty upon them, the
risk is very trifling, and the advantage would lie on
the side of extremely low duties in the first instance."
If the Legislature had wished to prevent trade,
and wished to prevent that increase of revenue
which trade gives, could a better method, except a
total prohibition of traffic, be found than this to
doom all things which might be unknown to the law-
maker, though well known to the merchant trading
to distant countries, to a duty of 50 per cent. or 20
per cent. on their value? What a monstrously ab-
surd principle is involved in the statement that the
lawmakers of a country which owes its social hap-
piness and political greatness to commerce, have
ordained no less than 1,150 rates of duty, and lest
any trade should grow up which they have not
caught, hare also ordained that nothing else shall
come in without paying 20 per cent on its value.
The mode in which the mind of the legislator
has come to this conclusion, illustrates one opera-
tion of the duties. When he laid, for example,
a duty on one species of oil, that raised the price
so much that another, or inferior species, Ka; used
in preference. Thus his duty forced the consump-
tioa of an inconvenient article, or forced men on
contrivances to substitute one thing for another,
in order to evade his duty. To prevent, therefore,
the loss which the revenue would then stiffer, he
was obliged to go on and subject all other species of
oil, and all things which might be substituted for it,
to an import duty the same as oil, inexpressibly to
to the hindrance of commerce. So it has come
about that, in order to gather a revenue from
articles imported and used, all other articles which,
by any possibility, might be imported, have been
prohibited to the 'extent of a heavy duty. What a
mischievous result.
Another mode in which the blind and blunder-
ing plan has operated, is thus described by the in-
telligent witness we have already quoted.
" There are a great many articles," says Mr.
J. D. Hume, p. 90, " which originally were at a
low duty, and where no protection was contemplated;
but during the war, year by year, and budget by
budget, the duties being yearly increased, many
articles had duties at last imposed on them, which
set people on the alert to make them at home, which
was never thought of before, and thus incidentally
those became protected."
In this case the consequence was to give an arti-
fi -jai direction to capital and labour, and beget, in
consequence of the principle being adopted of levy-
ing duties for the protection of native industry, a ne-
cessity for other restrictive laws. This shows that
there exists an indissolUble concatenation in the
moral as in the material world, which makes one
political folly as certainly the parent of another, as
vegetation follows the breaking up of winter, the fall
of spring showers, and the geniil glow of a spring sun.
It is plain that revenue can only be gathered
from articles when actually imported, and for use ;
and it is equally plain from this statement, that
*hose who increased the duties year after year, and
'budget after budget, and so drove men to make the
taxed articles at home, really deprived the State of
a revenue. It is also plain from this statement that
to collect a revenue by a system of import duties
they must be properly apportioned to the value of
the articles taxed, the estimation in which they are
held, and the facilities for making them at home,
circumstances which are liable to variation, and re-
spire the tariff to be varied accordingly. It is equally
plain that on such a lumping system these rules
cannot be noticed nor observed. The consequence
is that the trade which might yield a revenue is
stifled by the law ere it has well
come into exist-
ence, and the Legislature is the author of a practical
plan of painless extinction like that, for having only
proposed which, the writer under the sienature of
Marcus, has b,aosn so severely castigated. °
Another consequence of this catch-all system is
that it exposes trade and exposes merchants to vast
inconvenience. Every article that is brought into
the country must be warehoused or an account
taken of it. There are many articles which must
be weighed and an account made of them, or mea-
sured, and the merchant or his clerk must attend.
inconvenience.
At this causes expense as well as
At present trade is carried on for very small pro-
fits, and a small balance is sufficient to make it tin-
profitable, and put an end to it. The inconveni-
ence and expense, therefore, which this system
imposes on the merchant stops trade by rendering
it unpleasant and unprofitab e, and, by stopping
trade, injures the revenue.
Another way in which such duties interfere with
the natural employment of industry and capital is
exemplified by what has recently occurred in Par-
liament, concerning the growth of tobacco and the
manufacture of sugar. The enormous duty levied
on the former, intended solely to raise a revenue,
for there was no tobacco interest in the country to
protect, made it profitable to grow tobacco in Ire-
land ; and to protect the revenue, by preventing that
growth, after it had been begun, it becanis neces-
sary to pass a law to prohibit the growth, and the
plaet was everywhere plucked up. There may be
many circumstances for aught we know to make
i;advantageous to grow tobacco, and consequently