and Vice-President of the United States.  My attention was earnestly directed to this subject from the fact that the Thirty-fifth Congress terminated on the 3d March, 1859, without making the necessary appropriation for the service of the Post-Office Department.  I was then forced to consider the best remedy for this omission, and an immediate call of the present Congress was the natural resort.  Upon inquiry, however, I ascertained that fifteen out of the thirty-three States composing the Confederacy were without Representatives, and that consequently these fifteen States would be disfranchised by such a call.  These fifteen States will be in the same condition on the 4th March next.  Ten of them can not elect Representatives, according to existing State laws, until different periods, extending from the beginning of August next until the months of October and November.  In my last message I gave warning that in a time of sudden and alarming danger the salvation of our institutions might depend upon the power of the President immediately to assemble a full Congress to meet the emergency.

It is now quite evident that the financial necessities of the Government will require a modification of the tariff during your present session for the purpose of increasing the revenue.  In this aspect, I desire to reiterate the recommendation contained in my last two annual messages in favor of imposing specific instead of ad valorem duties on all imported articles to which these can be properly applied.  From long observation and experience I am convinced that specific duties are necessary, both to protect the revenue and to secure to our manufacturing interests that amount of incidental encouragement which unavoidably results from a revenue tariff.

As an abstract proposition it may be admitted that ad valorem duties would in theory be the most just and equal.  But if the experience of this and of all other commercial nations has demonstrated that such duties can not be assessed and collected without great frauds upon the revenue, then it is the part of wisdom to resort to specific duties.  Indeed, from the very nature of an ad valorem duty this must be the result.  Under it the inevitable consequence is that foreign goods will be entered at less than their true value.  The Treasury will therefore lose the duty on the difference between their real and fictitious value, and to this extent we are defrauded.

The temptations which ad valorem duties present to a dishonest importer are irresistible.  His object is to pass his goods through the custom-house at the very lowest valuation necessary to save them from confiscation.  In this he too often succeeds in spite of the vigilance, of the revenue officers.  Hence the resort to false invoices, one for the purchaser and another for the custom-house, and to other expedients to defraud the Government.  The honest importer produces his invoice to the collector, stating the