Chapter XLV: Repeal of the Salt Tax

A tax on Salt is an odious measure, hated by all people and in all time, and justly, because being an article of prime necessity, indispensable to man and to beast, and bountifully furnished them by the Giver of all good, the cost should not be burthened, nor the use be stinted by government regulation; and the principles of fair taxation would require it to be spared, because it is an agent, and a great one, in the development of many branches of agricultural and mechanical industry which add to the wealth of the country and produce revenue from the exports and consumption to which they give rise. People hate the salt tax, because they are obliged to have the salt, and cannot evade the tax: governments love the tax for the same reason--because people are obliged to pay it. This would seem to apply to governments despotic or monarchial, and not to those which are representative and popular. But representative governments sometimes have calamities--war for example--when subjects of taxation diminish as need for revenue increases: and then representative governments, like others, must resort to the objects which will supply its necessities. This has twice been the case with the article of salt in the United States. The duty on that article was carried up to a high tax in the _quasi_ war with France (1798), having been small before; and then only imposed as a war measure--to cease as soon as the war was over. But all governments work alike on the imposition and release of taxes--easy to get them on in a time of necessity--hard to get them off when the necessity has passed. So of this first war tax on salt. The "speck of war" with France, visible above the horizon in '98, soon sunk below it; and the sunshine of peace prevailed. In the year 1800--two years after the duty was raised to its maximum--the countries were on the most friendly terms; but it was not until 1807, and under the whole power of Mr. Jefferson's administration, that this temporary tax was abolished; and with it the whole system of fishing bounties and allowances founded upon it.

In the war of 1812, at the commencement of the war with Great Britain, it was renewed, with its concomitant of fishing bounties and allowances; but still as a temporary measure, limited to the termination of the war which induced it, and one year thereafter. The war terminated in 1815, and the additional year expired in 1816; but before the year was out, the tax was continued, not for a definite period, but without time--on the specious argument that, if a time was fixed, it would be difficult to get it off before the time was out: but if unfixed, it would be easy to get it off at any time: and all agreed that that was to be soon--that a temporary continuance of all the taxes was necessary until the revenue, deranged by the war, should become regular and adequate. It was continued on this specious argument--and remained in full until General Jackson's administration--and, in part, until this day (1850)--the fishing bounties and allowances in full: and that is the working of all governments in the levy and repeal of taxes. I found the salt tax in full force when I came to the Senate in 1820, strengthened by time, sustained by a manufacturing interest, and by the fishing interest (which made the tax a source of profit in the supposed return of the duty in the shape of bounties and allowances): and by the whole American system; which took the tax into its keeping, as a protection to a branch of home industry. I found efforts being made in each House to suppress this burthen upon a prime necessary of life; and, in the session 1829-'30, delivered a speech in support of the laudable endeavor, of which these are some parts:

"Mr. Benton commenced his speech, by saying that he was no
advocate for unprofitable debate, and had no ambition to add
his name to the catalogue of barren orators; but that there
were cases in which speaking did good; cases in which moderate
abilities produced great results, and he believed the question
of repealing the salt tax to be one of those cases. It had
certainly been so in England. There the salt tax had been
overthrown by the labors of plain men, under circumstances
much more unfavorable to their undertaking than exist here.
The English salt tax had continued one hundred and fifty
years. It was cherished by the ministry, to whom it yielded a
million and a half sterling of revenue; it was defended by the
domestic salt makers, to whom it gave a monopoly of the home
market; it was consecrated by time, having subsisted for five
generations; it was fortified by the habits of the people, who
were born, and had grown gray under it; and it was sanctioned
by the necessities of the State, which required every resource
of rigorous taxation. Yet it was overthrown; and the overthrow
was effected by two debates, conducted, not by the orators
whose renown has filled the world--not by Sheridan, Burke,
Pitt, and Fox--but by plain, business men--Mr. Calcraft, Mr.
Curwen, and Mr. Egerton. These patriotic members of the British
Parliament commenced the war upon the British salt tax in 1817,
and finished it in 1822. They commenced with the omens and
auspices all against them, and ended with complete success.
They abolished the salt tax _in toto_. They swept it all off,
bravely rejecting all compromises when they had got their
adversaries half vanquished, and carrying their appeals home
to the people, until they had roused a spirit before which the
ministry quailed, the monopolizers trembled, the Parliament gave
way, and the tax fell. This example is encouraging; it is full
of consolation and of hope; it shows what zeal and perseverance
can do in a good cause: it shows that the cause of truth and
justice is triumphant when its advocates are bold and faithful.
It leads to the conviction that the American salt tax will fall
as the British tax did, as soon as the people shall see that its
continuance is a burthen to them, without adequate advantage to
the government, and that its repeal is in their own hands.

"The enormous amount of the tax was the first point to which Mr.
B. would direct his attention. He said it was near three hundred
per cent. upon Liverpool blown, and four hundred per cent. upon
alum salt; but as the Liverpool was a very inferior salt, and
not much used in the West, he would confine his observations to
the salt of Portugal and the West Indies, called by the general
name of alum. The import price of this salt was from eight to
nine cents a bushel of fifty-six pounds each, and the duty upon
that bushel was twenty cents. Here was a tax of upwards of two
hundred per cent. Then the merchant had his profit upon the duty
as well as the cost of the article: and when it went through
the hands of several merchants before it got to the consumer,
each had his profit upon it; and whenever this profit amounted
to fifty per cent. upon the duty, it was upwards of one hundred
per cent. upon the salt. Then, the tariff laws have deprived the
consumer of thirty-four pounds in the bushel, by substituting
weight for measure, and that weight a false one. The true weight
of a measured bushel of alum salt is eighty-four pounds; but the
British tariff laws, for the sake of multiplying the bushels,
and increasing the product of the tax, substituted weight for
measure; and our tariff laws copied after them, and adopted
their standard of fifty-six pounds to the bushel.

"Mr. B. entered into statistical details, to show the aggregate
amount of this tax, which he stated to be enormous, and contrary
to every principle of taxation, even if taxes were so necessary
as to justify the taxing of salt. He stated the importation
of foreign salt, in 1829, at six millions of bushels, round
numbers; the value seven hundred and fifteen thousand dollars,
and the tax at twenty cents a bushel, one million two hundred
thousand dollars, the merchant's profit upon that duty at fifty
per cent. is six hundred thousand dollars; and the secret or
hidden tax, in the shape of false weight for true measure, at
the rate of thirty pounds in the bushel, was four hundred and
fifty thousand dollars. Here, then, is taxation to the amount
of about two millions and a quarter of dollars, upon an article
costing seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and that
article one of prime necessity and universal use, ranking next
after bread, in the catalogue of articles for human subsistence.

"The distribution of this enormous tax upon the different
sections of the Union, was the next object of Mr. B.'s inquiry;
and, for this purpose, he viewed the Union under three great
divisions--the Northeast, the South, and the West. To the
northeast, and especially to some parts of it, he considered
the salt tax to be no burthen, but rather a benefit and a
money-making business. The fishing allowances and bounties
produced this effect. In consideration of the salt duty, the
curers and exporters of fish are allowed money out of the
treasury, to the amount, as it was intended, of the salt duty
paid by them; but it has been proved to be twice as much.
The annual allowance is about two hundred and fifty thousand
dollars, and the aggregate drawn from the treasury since the
first imposition of the salt duty in 1789, is shown by the
treasury returns to be five millions of dollars. Much of this is
drawn by undue means, as is shown by the report of the Secretary
of the Treasury, at the commencement of the present session,
page eight of the annual report on the finances. The Northeast
makes much salt at home, and chiefly by solar evaporation, which
fits it for curing fish and provisions. Much of it is proved,
by the returns of the salt makers, to be used in the fisheries,
while the fisheries are drawing money from the treasury under
the laws which intended to indemnify them for the duty paid on
foreign salt. To this section of the Union, then, the salt tax
is not felt as a burthen.

"Let us proceed to the South. In this section there are but
few salt works, and no bounties or allowances, as there are no
fisheries. The consumers are thrown almost entirely upon the
foreign supply, and chiefly use the Liverpool blown. The import
price of this is about fifteen cents a bushel; the weight and
strength is less than that of alum salt; and the tax falls
heavily and directly upon the people, to the whole amount of
their consumption. It is a heavy burthen upon the South.

"The West is the last section to be viewed, and it will be
found to be the true seat of the most oppressive operations of
the salt tax. The domestic supply is high in price, deficient
in quantity, and altogether unfit for one of the greatest
purposes for which salt is there wanted--curing provisions
for exportation. A foreign supply is indispensable, and alum
salt is the kind used. The import price of this kind, from
the West Indies, is nine cents a bushel; from Portugal, eight
cents a bushel. At these prices, the West could be supplied
with this salt at New Orleans, if the duty was abolished; but,
in consequence of the duty, it costs thirty-seven and a half
cents per bushel there, being four times the import price of
the article, and seventy-five cents per bushel at Louisville
and other central parts of the valley of the Mississippi. This
enormous price, resolved into its component parts, is thus made
up: 1. Eight or nine cents a bushel for the salt. 2. Twenty
cents for duty. 3. Eight or ten cents for merchant's profit
at New Orleans. 4. Sixteen or seventeen cents for freight to
Louisville. 5. Fifteen or twenty cents for the second merchant's
profit, who counts his per centum on his whole outlay. In all,
about seventy-five cents for a bushel of fifty pounds, which,
if there was no duty, and the tariff regulations of weight
for measure abolished, would be bought in New Orleans, by the
measured bushel of eighty pounds weight, for eight or nine
cents, and would be brought up the river, by steamboats, at
the rate of thirty-three and a third cents per hundred weight.
It thus appears that the salt tax falls heaviest upon the
West. It is an error to suppose that the South is the greatest
sufferer. The West wants it for every purpose the South does,
and two great purposes besides--curing provision for export,
and salting stock. The West uses alum salt, and on this the
duty is heaviest, because the price is lower, and the weight
greater. Twenty cents on salt which costs eight or nine cents a
bushel is a much heavier duty than on that which costs fifteen
cents; and then the deception in the substitution of weight for
measure is much greater in alum salt, which weighs so much more
than the Liverpool blown. Like the South, the West receives no
bounties or allowances on account of the salt duties. This may
be fair in the South, where the imported salt is not re-exported
upon fish or provisions; but it is unfair in the West, where
the exportation of beef, pork, bacon, cheese, and butter, is
prodigious, and the foreign salt re-exported upon the whole of
it.

"Mr. B. then argued, with great warmth, that the provision
curers and exporters were entitled to the same bounties and
allowances with the exporters of fish. The claims of each
rested upon the same principle, and upon the principle of all
drawbacks--that of a reimbursement of the duty which was paid
on the imported salt when re-exported on fish and provisions.
The same principle covers the beef and pork of the farmer,
which covers the fish of the fisherman; and such was the law
in the beginning. The first act of Congress, in the year 1789,
which imposed a duty upon salt, allowed a bounty, in lieu of a
drawback, on beef and pork exported, as well as fish. The bounty
was the same in each case; it was five cents a quintal on dried
fish, five cents a barrel on pickled fish, and five on beef
and pork. As the duty on salt was increased, the bounties and
allowances were increased also. Fish and salted beef and pork
fared alike for the first twenty years.

"They fared alike till the revival of the salt tax at the
commencement of the late war. Then they parted company; bounties
and allowances were continued to the fisheries, and dropped
on beef and pork; and this has been the case ever since. The
exporters of fish are now drawing at the rate of two hundred
and fifty thousand dollars per annum, as a reimbursement for
their salt tax; while exporters of provisions draw nothing.
The aggregate of the fishing bounties and allowances, actually
drawn from the treasury, exceeds five millions of dollars;
while the exporters of provisions, who get nothing, would have
been entitled to draw a greater sum; for the export in salted
provisions exceeds the value of exported fish.

"Mr. B. could not quit this part of his subject, without
endeavoring to fix the attention of the Senate upon the
provision trade of the West. He took this trade in its largest
sense, as including the export trade of beef, pork, bacon,
cheese, and butter, to foreign countries, especially the West
Indies; the domestic trade to the Lower Mississippi and the
Southern States; the neighborhood trade, as supplying the towns
in the upper States, the miners in Missouri and the Upper
Mississippi, the army and the navy; and the various professions,
which, being otherwise employed, did not raise their own
provisions. The amount of this trade, in this comprehensive
view, was prodigious, and annually increasing, and involving in
its current almost the entire population of the West, either as
the growers and makers of the provisions, the curers, exporters,
or consumers. The amount could scarcely be ascertained. What
was exported from New Orleans was shown to be great; but it
was only a fraction of the whole trade. He declared it to be
entitled to the favorable consideration of Congress, and that
the repeal of the salt duty was the greatest favor, if an act of
justice ought to come under the name of favor, which could be
rendered it, as the salt was necessary in growing the hogs and
cattle, as well as in preparing the beef and pork for market. A
reduction in the price of salt, next to a reduction in the price
of land, was the greatest blessing which the federal government
could now confer upon the West. Mr. B. referred to the example
of England, who favored her provision curers, and permitted
them to import alum salt free of duty, for the encouragement of
the provision trade, even when her own salt manufacturers were
producing an abundant and superfluous supply of common salt. He
showed that she did more; that she extended the same relief and
encouragement to the Irish; and he read from the British statute
book an act of the British Parliament, passed in 1807, entitled
'An act to encourage the export of salted beef and pork from
Ireland,' which allowed a bounty of ten pence sterling on every
hundred weight of beef and pork so exported, in consideration of
the duty paid on the salt which was used in the curing of it.
He stated, that, at a later period, the duty had been entirely
repealed, and the Irish, in common with other British subjects,
allowed a free trade with all the world, in salt; and then
demanded, in the most emphatic manner, if the people of the West
could not obtain from the American Congress the justice which
the oppressed Irish had procured from a British Parliament,
composed of hereditary nobles, and filled with representatives
of rotten boroughs, and slavish retainers of the king's
ministers.

"The 'American system' has taken the salt tax under its
shelter and protection. The principles of that system, as I
understand them, and practise upon them, are to tax, through
the custom-house, the foreign rivals of our own essential
productions, when, by that taxation, an adequate supply of the
same article, as good and as cheap, can be made at home. These
were the principles of the system (Mr. B. said) when he was
initiated, and, if they had changed since, he had not changed
with them; and he apprehended a promulgation of the change would
produce a schism amongst its followers. Taking these to be the
principles of the system, let the salt tax be brought to its
test. In the first place, the domestic manufacture had enjoyed
all possible protection. The duty was near three hundred per
cent. on Liverpool salt, and four hundred upon alum salt; and
to this must be added, so far as relates to all the interior
manufactories, the protection arising from transportation,
frequently equal to two or three hundred per cent. more. This
great and excessive protection has been enjoyed, without
interruption, for the last eighteen years, and partially for
twenty years longer. This surely is time enough for the trial
of a manufacture which requires but little skill or experience
to carry it on. Now for the results. Have the domestic
manufactories produced an adequate supply for the country?
They have not; nor half enough. The production of the last
year (1829) as shown in the returns to the Secretary of the
Treasury, is about five millions of bushels; the importation of
foreign salt, for the same period, as shown by the custom-house
returns, is five million nine hundred and forty-five thousand
five hundred and forty-seven bushels. This shows the consumption
to be eleven millions of bushels, of which five are domestic.
Here the failure in the essential particular of an adequate
supply is more than one half. In the next place, how is it in
point of price? Is the domestic article furnished as cheap as
the foreign? Far from it, as already shown, and still further,
as can be shown. The price of the domestic, along the coast of
the Atlantic States, varies, at the works, from thirty-seven
and a half to fifty cents; in the interior, the usual prices,
at the works, are from thirty-three and a third cents to one
dollar for the bushel of fifty pounds, which can nearly be put
into a half bushel measure. The prices of the foreign salt, at
the import cities, as shown in the custom-house returns for
1829, are, for the Liverpool blown, about fifteen cents for the
bushel of fifty-six pounds; for Turk's Island and other West
India salt, about nine cents; for St. Ubes and other Portugal
salt, about eight cents; for Spanish salt, Bay of Biscay
and Gibraltar, about seven cents; from the Island of Malta,
six cents. Leaving out the Liverpool salt, which is made by
boiling, and, therefore, contains slack and bittern, a septic
ingredient, which promotes putrefaction, and renders that salt
unfit for curing provisions, and which is not used in the West,
and the average price of the strong, pure, alum salt, made by
solar evaporation, in hot climates, is about eight cents to the
bushel. Here, then, is another lamentable failure. Instead of
being sold as cheap as the foreign, the domestic salt is from
four to twelve times the price of alum salt. The last inquiry
is as to the quality of the domestic article. Is it as good
as the foreign? This is the most essential application of the
test: and here again the failure is decisive. The domestic salt
will not cure provisions for exportation (the little excepted
which is made, in the Northeast, by solar evaporation), nor
for consumption in the South, nor for long keeping at the army
posts, nor for voyages with the navy. For all these purposes it
is worthless, and useless, and the provisions which are put up
in it are lost, or have to be repacked, at a great expense, in
alum salt. This fact is well known throughout the West, where
too many citizens have paid the penalty of trusting to domestic
salt, to be duped or injured by it any longer.

"And here he submitted to the Senate, that the American system,
without a gross departure from its original principles, could
not cover this duty any longer. It has had the full benefit of
that system in high duties, imposed for a long time, on foreign
salt; it had not produced an adequate supply for the country,
nor half a supply; nor at as cheap a rate, by three hundred or
one thousand per cent.; and what it did supply so far from
being equal in quantity, could not even be used as a substitute
for the great and important business of the provision trade. The
amount of so much of that trade as went to foreign countries,
Mr. B. showed to be sixty-six thousand barrels of beef,
fifty-four thousand barrels of pork, two millions of pounds of
bacon, two millions of pounds of butter, and one million of
pounds of cheese; and he considered the supply for the army and
navy, and for consumption in the South, to exceed the quantity
exported.

"It cannot be necessary here to dilate upon the uses of salt.
But, in repealing that duty in England, it was thought worthy
of notice that salt was necessary to the health, growth, and
fattening of hogs, cattle, sheep, and horses; that it was a
preservative of hay and clover, and restored moulded and flooded
hay to its good and wholesome state, and made even straw and
chaff available as food for cattle. The domestic salt makers
need not speak of protection against alum salt. No quantity of
duty will keep it out. The people must have it for the provision
trade; and the duty upon that kind of salt is a grievous burthen
upon them, without being of the least advantage to the salt
makers.

"Mr. B. said, there was no argument which could be used here, in
favor of continuing this duty, which was not used, and used in
vain, in England; and many were used there, of much real force,
which cannot be used here. The American system, by name, was not
impressed into the service of the tax there, but its doctrines
were; and he read a part of the report of the committee on
salt duties, in 1817, to prove it. It was the statement of the
agent of the British salt manufacturers, Mr. William Horne, who
was sworn and examined as a witness. He said: 'I will commence
by referring to the evidence I gave upon the subject of rock
salt, in order to establish the presumption of the national
importance of the salt trade, arising from the large extent of
British capital employed in the trade, and the considerable
number of persons dependant upon it for support. I, at the
same time, stated that the salt trade was in a very depressed
state, and that it continued to fall off. I think it cannot be
doubted that the salt trade, in common with all staple British
manufactures, is entitled to the protection of government; and
the British manufacturers of salt consider that, in common
with other manufacturers of this country, they are entitled to
such protection, in particular from a competition at home with
foreign manufacturers; and, in consequence, they hope to see a
prohibitory duty on foreign salt.'

"Such was the petition of the British manufacturers. They urged
the amount of their capital, the depressed state of their
business, the number of persons dependent upon it for support,
the duty of the government to protect it, the necessity for
a prohibitory duty on foreign salt, and the fact that they
were making more than the country could consume. The ministry
backed them with a call for the continuance of the revenue,
one million five hundred thousand pounds sterling, derived
from the salt tax; and with a threat to lay that amount upon
something else, if it was taken off of salt. All would not
do. Mr. Calcraft, and his friends, appealed to the rights
and interests of the people, as overruling considerations in
questions of taxation. They denounced the tax itself as little
less than impiety, and an attack upon the goodness and wisdom
of God, who had filled the bowels of the earth, and the waves
of the sea, with salt for the use and blessing of man, and to
whom it was denied, its use clogged and fettered, by odious and
abominable taxes. They demanded the whole repeal; and when the
ministry and the manufacturers, overpowered by the voice of
the people, offered to give up three fourths of the tax, they
bravely resisted the proposition, stood out for total repeal,
and carried it.

"Mr. B. could not doubt a like result here, and he looked
forward, with infinite satisfaction, to the era of a free trade
in salt. The first effect of such a trade would be, to reduce
the price of alum salt, at the import cities, to eight or nine
cents a bushel. The second effect would be, a return to the
measured bushel, by getting rid of the tariff regulation, which
substituted weight for measure, and reduced eighty-four pounds
to fifty. The third effect would be, to establish a great trade,
carried on by barter, between the inhabitants of the United
States and the people of the countries which produce alum salt,
to the infinite advantage and comfort of both parties. He
examined the operation of this barter at New Orleans. He said,
this pure and superior salt, made entirely by solar evaporation,
came from countries which were deficient in the articles of
food, in which the West abounded. It came from the West Indies,
from the coasts of Spain and Portugal, and from places in the
Mediterranean; all of which are at this time consumers of
American provisions, and take from us beef, pork, bacon, rice,
corn, corn meal, flour, potatoes, &c. Their salt costs them
almost nothing. It is made on the sea beach by the power of the
sun, with little care and aid from man. It is brought to the
United States as ballast, costing nothing for the transportation
across the sea. The duty alone prevents it from coming to
the United States in the most unbounded quantity. Remove the
duty, and the trade would be prodigious. A bushel of corn is
worth more than a sack of salt to the half-starved people to
whom the sea and the sun give as much of this salt as they
will rake up and pack away. The levee at New Orleans would be
covered--the warehouses would be crammed with salt; the barter
trade would become extensive and universal, a bushel of corn,
or of potatoes, a few pounds of butter, or a few pounds of beef
or pork, would purchase a sack of salt; the steamboats would
bring it up for a trifle; and all the upper States of the Great
Valley, where salt is so scarce, so dear, and so indispensable
for rearing stock and curing provisions, in addition to all
its obvious uses, would be cheaply and abundantly supplied with
that article. Mr. B. concluded with saying, that, next to the
reduction of the price of public lands, and the free use of the
earth for labor and cultivation, he considered the abolition of
the salt tax, and a free trade in foreign salt, as the greatest
blessing which the federal government could now bestow upon the
people of the West."