FINANCE. The actual receipts of the Treasury for 1816 were, The Cash Balance in the Treasury, (excluding Treasury Notes,) 1st January, 1816.. Customs, for seven months, from the 1st of Jan. to 79 .$6,298,652 the last of August, 1816, without allowing for debentures on draw back, estimated at $1,829,564, 21,354,743 Direct Tax, including the assumed quotas of NewYork, Ohio, South Carolina, and Georgia, for the direct tax of 1816 Internal duties Postage, and incidental receipts Sales of public lands, (excluding $211,440 received in the Mississippi Territory, and payable to Georgia,).. Receipts in revenue, from the 1st of January to 3,713,963 3,864,000 127,025 676,710 the 1st of August, 1816 .........$36,035,093 Loans, by funding and issuing Treasury Notes 9,790,825 Gross receipts from the 1st of January to the 1st of August, 1816.... 45,825,918 Estimated receipts, from the 1st of August to the 31st of December, 1816 . 19,876,710 Gross annual receipts for 1816.... $65,702,628 Probable receipts compared with probable expenditures of 1816. ........ .... The gross annual receipt for 1816..... 865,702,631 46,717,975 18,984,656 9,790,821 $9,193,835 Customs from March, 1815, to July, 1816, both in Customs from March to Dec. 1815, both inclusive, 6,916,399 794,857 Product of Customs, exclusive of collection.... 86,121,542 Customs from January to July, 1816, both inclusive, 21,354,743 Debentures during the same period... 1,829,564 Product of Customs, exclusive of collection ....... $19,525,179 New-York Customs, from March, 1815, to July 1816, both inclusive.. $9,926,188 The duties remained nearly the same from 1802 to 1812, except the additional two and a half per cent. on merchandise imported, paying duties ad valorem, which constituted the Mediterranean fund: whence the great increase of duties from 1802 to the commencement of the restrictive system, was owing chiefly to the increased population and consumption of the country, and the prosperous state of American commerce, until destroyed by the embargo. On the first of July, 1812, one hundred per cent. was added to all the permanent duties, which was to continue during the war against England, and one year thereafter. This increased the rate of duties, ad valorem, to 40, 30, and 25 per cent. Soon after the establishment of the federal government in 1789, duties on American spirits and stills were laid; other internal taxes were afterward laid; but were all repealed in 1802. The sums paid on these internal taxes, from their commencement to September 30th,1812, was 86,460,003, of which $1,048,033 were paid in 1801; and in 1812, only 84,903. The states which paid the largest proportions of the internal taxes were Massachusetts, 8232,566; New-York, 8143,757; Pennsylvania, $209,545; Virginia, $115,444. Although these internal duties were repealed in 1802, their collection has never yet been completed. On the first of January, 1812, the balances due on the internal revenue, in the several States, amounted to $254,940. At the first session of the thirteenth Congress, held in the summer of 1813, internal duties were laid on licences for stills and boilers, carriages for conveyance of persons, licences to retailers of foreign merchandise, wines, and spirituous liquors, on sales at auction, refined sugar, and stamped paper. The amount of the tax was about double its former rate on most of these articles, and three times that amount on licences to retailers. The original plan of the Treasury Department, and adopted by Congress, was to carry on the war by loans; and to provide no more revenue than might be sufficient to defray the ordinary expenses of the government, to pay the interest of the existing public debt, and of new loans, amounting to about $9,000,000, which were to be raised by doubling the duties on imports, and laying twenty cents a bushel on salt; G by sales of public lands; by direct tax of $3,000,000; and $2,000,000 by a tax on stills, spirits, refined sugar, licences to retailers, sales at auction, carriages, and stamp paper. These taxes, however, were not permitted to commence until the first of January, 1814. The sums raised by these internal taxes, exclusive of the direct tax, for the two first quarters of 1814, amounted to $2,212,491; for the two last quarters, to $1,000,000. On the nineteenth of September, 1814, additional duties were laid on spirits, licences to retailers, carriages, sales at auction, and stamped paper. During the same session, Congress also imposed duties on goods, wares, and merchandise, manufactured within the United States, as iron, candles, hats and caps, paper, umbrellas and parasols, playing and visiting cards, saddles and bridles, boots and shoes, beer, ale, and porter, tobacco, snuff and segars, leather, gold and silver plated-ware, jewellery, paste-work, household furniture, and gold and silver watches. and collection expense 279,227 The amount paid into the Treasury, in 1815, was .. 4,697,252 The amount paid from the first of January to the thirtieth of June, 1816, was.... 3,241,427 Soon after the close of the war, in 1815, the duties on manufactures, household furniture, gold and silver watches, and spirits distilled within the United States, were repealed, as were the additional duties on postage, and retail licences. The internal duties, remaining in 1817, are duties on licences for stills and boilers, to retailers, on carriages, refined sugar, sales at auction, stamped paper, and bank notes. Most of these internal duties, especially those on manufactures, were laid upon the articles ad valorem ; and both the value and quantity of the articles manufactured is made to depend, principally, on the books and oaths of the manufacturer, or those employed by him. The multiplication of oaths is bad policy in any government; it is, in fact, offering a perpetual bounty to one of the worst species of immorality, that of false-swearing. All the world knows what a latitude of conscience custom-house oaths imply in England, in France, in Holland, in these United States, and in every commercial community; and our American government now adds to this mass of evil, by a new incitement to perjury, in collecting its duties on manufactures, upon the oaths of those persons who are most directly interested to falsify the returns. On the fourteenth of July, 1798, the first direct tax, amounting to 82,000,000, was laid upon the United States, and apportioned according to the provisions of the federal constitution, the fourth clause of the ninth section of the first article of which declares, that no capitation or other direct tax shall be laid, unless in proportion to the census or enumeration, directed by the third clause of the second section of the first article; namely, representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states, according to their respective numbers, determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, (including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed), three-fifths of all other persons; the actual enumeration to be made once in every ten years. By marking the apportionment of direct taxes at different periods, the relative growth of the population of the several states during those periods may be distinctly ascertained. In 1798, the two millions of dollars, direct tax, were thus apportioned among the states: |