PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 305 



income or principal of the same did not appear unreasonable, espe- 

 cially in the case where no exemption from taxation was stipu- 

 lated in the contract for these issues. But neither the author of the 

 report nor its indorsers could have anticipated that within little 

 more than five years after it was submitted to Congress, the Fed- 

 eral Government could have borrowed $185,000,000 at four and a 

 half per cent interest ; and that twenty-five years afterward would 

 be able to renew a debt of $25,364,500 at two per cent per annum, 

 or at a rate fifty per cent less than loans on the best corporate or 

 private securities would have at the same time commanded. 



The method of prosecuting the work contemplated by Con- 

 gress of the Commission was at the outset a matter of no little 

 embarrassment. There was practically no material or basis to 

 work on, except the bare statutes authorizing war taxes, and no 

 official collection of these was published by the Government 

 until two years after the commencement of the war. There was 

 no bureau of statistics in the Treasury, and in this department of 

 the Government the ofiicials to whom was assigned the duty of 

 collecting and publishing reliable data relative to the trade and 

 commerce of the country were untrained. No full and reliable 

 statistics concerning any branch of trade or industry in the 

 United States, with possibly a very few exceptions, were then, or 

 ever had been, available. The Treasury received returns of the 

 aggregate of revenue collected and the sources whence it was 

 derived ; but these returns were rarely, if ever, accompanied by 

 any suggestions, derived from administrative experience, of any 

 value. The commercial returns from the customs were hardly 

 worth the paper on which they were written. Thus, for exam- 

 ple, when the duty on the importation of coffee came up for con- 

 sideration as a source of revenue, the value of the coffee imported 

 during the fiscal year 1864-'65 was officially returned at ten and a 

 half cents per pound, while its average invoice price, according to 

 the trade of New York for the same period, was not less than 

 thirteen cents. Again, according to the Treasury statement, the 

 aggregate imports of coffee for the same year, were 104,316,581 

 pounds. Of this amount 82,353,000 pounds, which were retained 

 for domestic consumption, had a returned value of only six and 

 four tenths cents per pound, while the value of 21,962,000 pounds 

 of the same imports which were exported during the same year, 

 had the extraordinary value of nearly twenty- five cents per pound. 

 For the year 1863 the Treasury reported an aggregate import of 

 spirits distilled from grain of 1,064,576 gallons, but of this quan- 

 tity only 45,393 gallons were entered at the ports of Boston, New 

 York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and San Francisco, leaving an 

 inferential import of 1,019,183 gallons at other ports of the loyal 

 States that practically had no foreign commerce. 



TOL. XLVIII. 22 



