as much more for their cotton, as would equal this increased value of the imports obtained for them. If no one would give them this increased price in money, they would have the common sense to see that by importing the foreign goods themselves, they could certainly realize it. Thus it is, that when the whole matter came to be adjusted, imported goods would be neither higher nor lower than they are at present, and the cotton-planter would obtain the same price for his cotton. This argument becomes still more striking upon the supposition that the whole import duty is paid by the consumer. For if that were true, it would follow, that upon changing the import into export duties, the importing merchant could, in the first instance, make forty per cent. more upon his imports than he does now, inasmuch as they would cost him no more in Europe, and the demand and supply in the United States being unaltered, he could obtain the same price for them here. Of course his profits would be increased by the whole amount of the duty repealed. As we stated before, the intrinsic value of imported goods would be increased in the same degree, and the exporters of cotton would take care to obtain for it, the value of the imports it would purchase, and thereby reduce the profits of the importing merchant to their proper level. And thus it would follow, from the erroneous theory that the consumer pays the whole duty, that the imported goods obtained for cotton, would be precisely as cheap in the United States, under an export duty upon cotton, as if no duty at all were imposed either upon the exports or imports ; leaving the cotton-planter to bear the whole burthen of the export duty, without ultimate indemnity for any part of it.

Let us now examine the operation of the system of Federal taxation, upon the supposition, that the Southern planters manufactured by machinery, the goods now imported in exchange for their staples, and that a discriminating excise duty were imposed upon their manufactures equal to the duty now imposed upon their imports. This, we have shewn, would be precisely equivalent to the existing Tariff. How would it operate, respectively upon the Southern manufacturers, the Northern manufacturers, and the consumers? It is obvious that the Southern manufacturers would pay the excise duty in the first instance, and would, of course, ultimately bear the burthen of it, except so far as they could throw it upon the consumers. To what extent could they do this? The only possible manner in which they could do it at all, would be by enhancing the price of their manufactures. Assuming the duty they paid to be forty per cent. could they obtain that much more for their manufactures? It must be here remembered that the Northern man

ufactures supply two-thirds of the whole consumption of the country, and that they would pay no duty at all. They could of course, afford to sell their manufactures as cheap, as if no duty had been imposed on their Southern competitors. If, therefore, these latter should demand forty per cent. more for their manufactures, in consequence of the duty, they would demand what they certainly would not get. They would have to make their election between selling as low as their competitors, and not selling at all. They would, of course, prefer selling as low as their competitors. How low would that be? As low as they sold before the duty? At first it probably would, very nearly; but prices would finally adjust themselves to the average cost of production, making a compound estimate of the Southern and Northern, the taxed and the untaxed manufactures, which make up the whole consumption of the country. It will be seen that we regard the tax upon the Southern manufactures, as being precisely the same thing, as increasing the cost of their production, forty per cent. The result of this average would be, that manufactures, would sell only thirteen and one-third per cent. higher, in consequence of a duty of forty per cent. levied upon one-third of them. The Southern manufacturers, therefore, paying forty per cent. to the government, and getting back only thirteen and one-third from the consumer, would sustain a loss of twenty-six and two-thirds per cent. as producers; while the Northern manufacturers would not only be entirely exempted from this burthen-in itself an unjust discrimination-but would obtain thirteen and one-third per cent. more for their manufactures, in consequence of the duty imposed upon those of the South. It is too palpable to be disguised, that while the Southern manufactures would lose twenty-six and two-thirds per cent. the Northern would gain thirteen and one-third per cent. by the duty; making a difference of just forty per cent. between them. And yet there are those among us, speaking from high places, who maintain that a system precisely equivalent to this is perfectly just and equal as it regards the different sections of the Union, and imposes no burthen upon the Southern planterswho stand in the place of the Southern manufacturers here supposed-that is not equally borne by all the citizens of the United States, as consumers! How, then, would the consumers be affected by the supposed excise duty? We admit that it would enhance the price of manufactures equally, all over the Union, and consequently that all the consumers of the United States, considered merely as consumers, would be equally affected by it. But what would be the aggregate effect upon the two sections of the Union? Assuming that the Northern sec

tions-constituting two-thirds of the Union-should consume the two-thirds of the manufactures which are made there, it would follow, that while the consumers in that section would pay thirteen and one-third per cent. more for manufactures; the manufacturers would obtain just that much more for them, in consequence of the duty; and as the quantity produced there would be equal to the quantity consumed, it would clearly result that the Northern States, as a section of the Union, would gain precisely as much as it would lose by the duty.

We will now inquire how the proposed system would operate upon the Southern section of the Union. The Southern manufactures, we have seen, would pay two-thirds of the duty, as producers, and as the Southern consumers would use just about the quantity of manufactures made in the South, they would pay the other third, in the increased price of manufactures. The whole amount of the duty levied upon their productions, would consequently fall upon the people of the Southern States, while no part of it would fall upon the Northern States as a section of the Union. The aggregate annual revenue of the former, would be diminished the full amount of the duties, while that of the latter would not be diminished at all. The injustice and inequality of this system would be in no degree diminished-as it has been maintained-by the considerations, that the Northern consumers would participate with those of the South, in paying that portion of the duty which would fall upon consumption, and that the Northern producers who would receive the same amount, as an indirect bounty, constitute a minority of the people of the Northern States. When we perceive that two-thirds of the burthen of a very enormous duty levied upon our productions, unjustly falls upon our planters, in order to give an equivalent benefit to the manufacturers of the North, are we to be told that it is not a sectional injustice, and that the Southern States have no peculiar cause of complaint, because the plunder is not equally divided among the people of the States that commit the outrage? Suppose that the manufacturers of the North were feudal barons, and the persons dependent upon them and connected with them in various ways, were their retainers-and that some ten thousand of these barons, were to march to the South, at the head of two or three hundred thousand of their retainers, to plunder our plantations by arms, as they now do by legislation; would it be any mitigation of the injury done to the South, that the great body of the people in the Northern States did not participate in the enjoyment of the spoil, or even that they were compelled to defray the expenses of those plundering expeditions.

We will now examine very briefly, the operation of the discriminating import duties, assumed in the last of Mr. McDuffie's political equations. It is assumed that the Northern people instead of manufacturing goods as they now do, obtain them by the process pursued in the Southern States, that is to say, by making cotton and exchanging it for foreign manufactures. It is also assumed that the Northern cotton growers cannot sell cotton as cheap as those of the South, and that, to place them on an equality, a duty of forty per cent. is laid upon the imports obtained for Southern cotton, while those obtained for Northern cotton, are entirely exempted from it. This we have shewn to be exactly equivalent, in all respects, to the existing system of protection. How then, would it operate? And first, upon the Southern planters? They would be subject to precisely the same burthen that they now are, without even a change in its form, the very same duty being imposed upon the imports obtained for their cotton. What would be the effect of that duty upon the price of imported manufactures? Would it enhance it forty per cent. and thereby throw the whole burthen upon the consumers? No one will maintain such a glaring error, in this case, though many do, in a case precisely analogous. The dullest must perceive that a duty of forty per cent. on onethird part only of the national imports, would not have the same effect upon their price, as the like duty upon the whole of them; or in plainer English, that a tax of one million is not quite equal to a tax of three. And yet it requires but a small share of attention to perceive, that the exemption of manufactures made in the Northern States, from the duty in question, must have precisely the same effect upon the price of manufactures generally, as the exemption of manufactures imported in exchange for Northern cotton. The thing is the same; the name and the form only are different. The price of goods would be adjusted, as we stated in a former case, to the average cost of the whole mass; the imports of the South costing forty per cent. more than those of the North after having passed the customhouse. If the Northern imports should be twice the quantity of the Southern, the price of manufactures would be increased only thirteen and one-third per cent. at the furthest. Now what would be the relative condition of the Southern cotton planters? The manufactures obtained for their cotton would command no higher price in the United States, and could be purchased in Europe for no lower price, than those obtained for Northern cotton; and yet the former would pay a tax of forty per cent. from which the latter would be exempted. Would a bale of cotton be worth as much to a Southern planter, as a producer merely, as it would to a

Northern cotton-grower? The difference-too palpable to be disguised by any sophistry-would be precisely forty per cent. As we have stated before, cotton is worth precisely as much to the planter or exporter, as the goods obtained in exchange for it; and there is no axiom in Euclid's Elements more clear, than that imports which pay a duty of forty per cent. are intrinsically worth that much less than those which pay no duty at all, when they both cost the same price in Europe, and sell for the same price in the United States. And how would the Northern cotton-growers be affected by the supposed system? Would they derive any greater advantage from it than the manufacturers now do from the existing Tariff? Certainly they would not, but the very same. The intrinsic value of their cotton, or, which is the same thing, the imports obtained for it, would be increased precisely as much by exemption from the duty laid on Southern imports, as if they were manufactured by machinery. How would the consumers be affected? Precisely as they are by the present Tariff. The duties would be the very same and upon the very same things; the exemption from duties would be the same also, and in favour of the very same things-acquired, however, in a different mode.

The erroneous theory, that the whole burden of an indirect tax falls upon the consumer, is an admirable contrivance for disguising the injustice and enormity of unequal taxation. If taxation operates only upon the consumers and in proportion to their consumption, no indirect tax, however partial, as to the productions upon which it is laid, can be unequal and oppressive in its operation, provided the productions taxed are generally consumed. And even where a small portion only of a given production is selected for proscriptive taxation, where for example a heavy tax is exclusively laid upon the manufactures of a single State, it is perfectly evident that it would operate equally upon all the consumers of the United States, considered as consumers merely, inasmuch as the price of the taxed articles could not be higher than that of the same description of articles which paid no tax. As almost every article is of general consumption, scarcely any indirect tax, upon this theory, could be unequal in its operation. The whole revenue of the government might be raised by a tax upon a single article, produced in only a few of the States-(according to a paradox advanced in a Northern Review,) and yet no section of the Union, no class of producers, would have any just cause to complain of the injustice of the measure. From this very obvious difference between production and consumption-the former being local, as to the great rival staples of the Union, and the