No statesman would advise that we should go on increasing the national debt to meet the ordinary expenses of the Government.  This would be a most ruinous policy.  In case of war our credit must be our chief resource, at least for the first year, and this would be greatly impaired by having contracted a large debt in time of peace.  It is our true policy to increase our revenue so as to equal our expenditures.  It would be ruinous to continue to borrow.  Besides, it may be proper to observe that the incidental protection thus afforded by a revenue tariff would at the present moment to some extent increase the confidence of the manufacturing interests and give a fresh impulse to our reviving business.  To this surely no person will object.

In regard to the mode of assessing and collecting duties under a strictly revenue tariff, I have long entertained and often expressed the opinion that sound policy requires this should be done by specific duties in cases to which these can be properly applied.  They are well adapted to commodities which are usually sold by weight or by measure, and which from their nature are of equal or of nearly equal value.  Such, for example, are the articles of iron of different classes, raw sugar, and foreign wines and spirits.

In my deliberate judgment specific duties are the best, if not the only, means of securing the revenue against false and fraudulent invoices, and such has been the practice adopted for this purpose by other commercial nations.  Besides, specific duties would afford to the American manufacturer the incidental advantages to which he is fairly entitled under a revenue tariff.  The present system is a sliding scale to his disadvantage.  Under it, when prices are high and business prosperous, the duties rise in amount when he least requires their aid.  On the contrary, when prices fall and he is struggling against adversity, the duties are diminished in the same proportion, greatly to his injury.  Neither would there be danger that a higher rate of duty than that intended by Congress could be levied in the form of specific duties.  It would be easy to ascertain the average value of any imported article for a series of years, and, instead of subjecting it to an ad valorem duty at a certain rate per centum, to substitute in its place an equivalent specific duty.

By such an arrangement the consumer would not be injured.  It is true he might have to pay a little more duty on a given article in one year, but, if so, he would pay a little less in another, and in a series of years these would counterbalance each other and amount to the same thing so far as his interest is concerned.  This inconvenience would be trifling when contrasted with the additional security thus afforded against frauds upon the revenue, in which every consumer is directly interested.

I have thrown out these suggestions as the fruit of my own observation, to which Congress, in their better judgment, will give such weight as they may justly deserve.