The Economic Policies of Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton Alexander
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mild and equitable provision is an effectual guard against suffering or inconvenience, in consequence of undesigned transgressions of the law.
The 30th section contains a provision in favor of persons, who, though innocent, may accidently suffer by seizures of their property (as in the execution of the revenue laws sometimes unavoidably happens), which is, perhaps, entirely peculiar to the law under consideration. Where there has even been a probable cause of seizure, sufficient to acquit an officer, the jury are to assess whatever damages may have accrued from an injury to the article seized, with an allowance for the detention of it, at the rate of six per centum per annum of the value, which damages are to be paid out of the public treasury.
There are other provisions of the act which mark the scrupulous attention of the Government to protect the parties concerned from inconvenience and injury, and which conspire to vindicate the law from imputations of severity or oppression.
The supposed tendency of the act to injure industry, and to interfere with the business of distilling, is endeavored to be supported by some general and some special reasons, both having relation to the effect of the duty upon the manufacture.
Those of the first kind affirm generally, that duties on home manufactures are impolitic, because they tend to discourage them; that they are particularly so, when they are laid on articles manufactured from the produce of the country, because they have, then, the additional effect of injuring agriculture; that it is the general policy of nations to protect and promote their own manufactures, especially those which are wrought out of domestic materials; that the law in question interferes with this policy.
Observations of this kind admit of an easy answer. Duties on manufactures tend to discourage them, or not, according to the circumstances under which they are laid; and are impolitic, or not, according to the same circumstances. When a manufacture is in its infancy, it is impolitic to tax it, because the tax would be both unproductive, and would add to the difficulties which naturally impede the first attempts to establish a new manufacture, so as to endanger its success.
But when a manufacture (as in the case of distilled spirits in the United States) is arrived at maturity, it is as fit an article of taxation as any other. No good reason can be assigned why the consumer of a domestic commodity should not contribute something to the public revenue, when the consumer of a foreign commodity contributes to it largely. And, as a general rule, it is not to be disputed, that duties on articles of consumption are paid by the consumers.
To the manufacture itself, the duty is no injury, if an equal duty be laid on the rival foreign article. And when a greater duty is laid upon the latter than upon the former, as in the present instance, the difference is a bounty on the domestic article, and operates as an encouragement of the manufacture. The manufacturer can afford to sell his fabric the cheaper, in proportion to that difference, and is so far enabled to undersell and supplant the dealer in the foreign article.
The principle of the objection would tend to confine all taxes to imported articles, and would deprive the Government of resources, which are indispensable to a due provision for the public safety and welfare, contrary to the plain intention of the Constitution, which gives express power to employ those resources when necessary—a power which is found in all governments, and is essential to their efficiency, and even to their existence.
Duties on articles of internal production and manufacture form in every country the principal sources of revenue. Those on imported articles can only be carried to a certain extent, without defeating their object, by operating either as prohibitions, or as bounties upon smuggling. They are, moreover, in some degree temporary; for, as the growth of manufactures diminishes the quantum of duty on imports, the public revenue, ceasing to arise from that source, must be derived from articles which the national industry has substituted for those previously imported. If the Government cannot then resort to internal means for the additional supplies which the exigencies of every nation call for, it will be unable to perform its duty, or, even to preserve its existence. The community must be unprotected, and the social compact be dissolved.
For the same reasons that a duty ought not to be laid on an article manufactured out of the country (which is the point most insisted upon), it ought not to be laid upon the produce itself, nor consequently upon the land, which is the instrument of that produce; because taxes are laid upon land, as the fund out of which the income of the proprietor is drawn; or, in other words, on account of its produce. There ought, therefore, on the principle of the objection, to be neither taxes on land, nor the produce of land, nor on articles manufactured from that produce. And if a nation should be in a condition to supply itself with its own manufactures, there could then be very little or no revenue; of course, there must be a want of the essential means of national justice and national security.
Positions like these, however well meant by those who urge them, refute themselves, because they tend to the dissolution of government by rendering it incapable of providing for the objects for which it is instituted.
However true the allegation, that it is, and ought to be, the prevailing policy of nations to cherish their own manufactures, it is equally true that nations in general lay duties for the purpose of revenue on their own manufactures; and it is obvious, to a demonstration, that it may be done without injury to them. The most successful nations in manufactures have drawn the largest revenues from the most useful of them. It merits particular attention that ardent spirits are an article which has been generally deemed, and made use of, as one of the fittest objects of revenue, and to an extent, in other countries, which bears no comparison with what has been done in the United States.
The special reasons alluded to are of different kinds:
1 It is said that the act in question, by laying a smaller additional duty on foreign spirits than the duty on home-made spirits, has a tendency to discourage the manufacture of the latter.This objection merits consideration, and, as far as it may appear to have foundation, ought to be obviated.The point, however, seems not to have been viewed, in all its respects, in a correct light.Before the present Constitution of the United States began to operate, the regulations of the different States respecting distilled spirits were very dissimilar. In some of them, duties were laid on foreign spirits only; in others, on domestic as well as foreign. The absolute duty, in former instances, and the difference of duty in the latter, was, upon an average, considerably less than the present difference in the duties on foreign and home-made spirits. If to this be added the effect of the uniform operation of the existing duties throughout the United States, it is easy to infer that the situation of our own distilleries is, in the main, much better, as far as they are affected by the laws, than it was previous to the passing of any act of the United States upon the subject. They have, therefore, upon the whole, gained materially under the system which has been pursued by the National Government.The first law of the United States on this head laid a duty of no more than eight cents per gallon on those of Jamaica proof. The second increased the duty on foreign spirits to twelve cents per gallon, of the lowest proof, and by certain gradations, to fifteen cents per gallon, of Jamaica proof. The last act places the duty at twenty cents per gallon, of the lowest proof, and extends it, by the like gradations, to twenty-five cents per gallon, of Jamaica proof; laying also a duty of eleven cents per gallon on homemade spirits, distilled from foreign materials of the lowest proof, with a like gradual extension to fifteen cents per gallon of Jamaica proof; and a duty of nine cents per gallon on home-made spirits, distilled from domestic materials of the lowest proof, with the like gradual extension to thirteen cents per gallon, of Jamaica proof.If the transition had been immediate from the first to the last law, it could not have failed to have been considered as a change in favor of our own distilleries, as far as the rate of duty is concerned. The mean duty on foreign spirits by the first law was nine cents; by the last the mean extra duty on foreign spirits is, in fact, about eleven cents, as it regards spirits distilled from foreign materials, and about thirteen as it regards spirits distilled from domestic materials. In making this computation, it is to be adverted to that the four first degrees of proof mentioned in the law correspond with the different kinds of spirits usually imported, while the generality of those made in the United States are of the lowest class of proof.Spirits from domestic materials derived a double advantage from the last law; that is, from the increased rate of duty on foreign imported