326 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Congress, says, speaking of the increase of duties on imports by the 

 tariff act of July 14, 1862, that it " shut out still more conclusively 

 all competition from foreign fabrics. The increased cost was charged 

 to the consumer." Mr. McKinley, in 1890, in a report introducing 

 a bill for revision of the tariff of the United States, in the direction of 

 increased rates of duties on imports, said it was not the intent of the 

 bill " to further cut down prices," that the people were " already 

 suffering from low prices," and would not be satisfied " with legisla- 

 tion which will result in lower prices." In an elaborate opinion 

 given by the ISTew York Court of Appeals in 1851 (see vol. iv, New 

 York Reports), in which there was no suspicion of any issue of free 

 trade or protection, the courts, in carefully considering the relative 

 powers of the legislature and the judiciary in respect to taxation, 

 assumed the proposition that " all duties on imported goods are taxes 

 on the class of consumers " to be in the nature of a self-evident truth 

 or economic axiom. 



Henry Clay, in a celebrated speech in the United States House 

 of Representatives in 1833, in advocacy of a protective tariff policy, 

 candidly admitted that " in general it may be taken as a rule that 

 the duty upon an article forms a portion of its price." But he sub- 

 sequently qualified such admission by claiming that it does not fol- 

 low that any consequent enhancement of its price is a tax on con- 

 sumers, inasmuch as " directly or indirectly, in one form or another, 

 all consumers of protected articles, enhanced in price," will get an 

 equivalent. But this may be equally affirmed of all necessary and 

 equitable taxation, and does not in any way antagonize the theory that 

 the final incidence of the class of taxes under consideration falls on 

 consumption. 



But, notwithstanding these conclusions and the incontrovertible 

 evidence by which they are supported, not a few persons occupying 

 places of great legislative influence, and no small part of the general 

 public, hold to the view that taxes on imports are really in the nature 

 of premiums paid by foreigners for the privilege of selling their 

 goods in the markets of the importing country, and do not fall on its 

 people who consume them. That means that if the foreigner has a 

 yard of cloth, or other commodity, which he sells at home for one 

 dollar, and the United States imposes a tariff of fifty cents on it, he 

 will then sell it for export to America at fifty cents. There is no in- 

 stance mentioned in history where this has ever been done, but history 

 unfortunately is rarely taken into account by the public in the dis- 

 cussion of these questions. In this connection the following his- 

 torical incident is interesting and instructive: In 1782 an attempt 

 by the Congress of the Confederation of the several American States 

 to provide a system of revenue to defray the general expenses of the 



