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