The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1836-03-18 00:00:00

THE RELIEF BILL.

The bill for partially relieving the sufferers by the late fire, by
extending the time allotted for the payment of duties on the
goods destroyed, having or being about to become a law, we
fondly indulge the hope that the more important and greater
act of justice—a total remission of the duties exacted at the time
of landing the goods—will also be performed by the congress of
the United States, on the admitted grounds, that their having
been destroyed by fire, and therefore not entering into the can-
sumptior of the country, the duties levied cannot be justly re-
tained in the public treasury.
It will be recollected that immediately after the occurrence of
the great calamity we urged this measure on the consideration
of congress. We urged it as a measure not of kindness but of
right ;—of right so indisputable, that it seemed impossible to
find an argument which possessed even the appearance of plau-
sibility to bear against it. This right rests upon the broad nu-
i*utable ground, that taxation in every civilized country is the
price paid for some one censideration or the other. For some
benefit, some luxury, some advantage, or at least for some spe-
cified object. We have heard of the light of heaven being taxed,
but then the person paving the tax must have windows in his
dwelling, through which that light is received. If he close up
his windows, or if his dwelling be consumed by fire, extortion has
never been carried to such a length as still to demand a window
tax. So with regard to everything else in all civilized Europe;
if the object on which the tax imposed were by some extraor.,
dinary event reduced to mere nothingness, the tax, which is the
-price of the enjoyment or possession of that object, is never in
a community of reasoning beings exacted.
In regard to the taxes levied in the United States on imported
goods, can it, will it be disputed, that this tax is the price paid
by the people for the application of them to purposes for which
they are imported? It surely cannot he ; no intellect can be
so obtuse as not instantly to perceive the utter fallacy of a 'con-
traryargument. 'And does It not follow as a 'corollary, 'that
when the application of these ,goods to the purposes for which
the tax was imposed is rendered impossible, that the tax can no
longer be exacted withont manifest injustice, and a violation of
the principle upon which they are imposed ?
We never have entertained a doubt that if this important
measure—this sheer'act "Of undeniable justice—had been embo-
died in-the original bill reported by our "commercial represen-
tative," as, he is called, it would have been promptly acceded
to by congress. But being an act of justice and nothing else, it
is not now, nor ever can be too late to grant it; and we are un-
willing to believe, therefore, that it will. be long withheld.
Every dollar now in the public treasury, or which may ever
reach there, horn duties levied on .the goods destroyed by the
fire in this city, is the property of those to whom the. goods be-
longed, and cannot be withheld from them without tarnishing
the good faith which it is as incumbent upon the government to
preserve towards its people as towards foreign nations.