principally for that purpose that, in behalf of our society, I beg leave to request your aid. This would consist in the selection of the proper persons to whom application should be made (amongst whom I can only mention the Rev. Mr. Worcester for the Cherokee, and Mr. Byington for the Choctaw), and a request to them on the part of your Department to comply with our wishes. In case you should feel disposed to favor our object, our society will prepare a circular explaining as clearly as we can the subjects of inquiry.

For all further details permit me to refer you to my friend and collaborator, Mr. Bartlett, who will have the honor to present this letter to you. Our society will in its next and ensuing volumes gradually publish those several grammars, together with such other miscellaneous information as can be obtained. The question whether the War Department may not afford us further aid, by subscribing for a number of copies of our next volumes for the use of its Indian agents, sub-agents, and school-teachers, may be left open for the time when the society will be ready to publish its next volume. We have no funds; the greater part of those necessary for the publication of our first volume has been advanced by Mr. Bartlett and myself; we distribute gratuitously near two hundred copies, and the sale of a work of this kind is very slow. We cannot afford to give away the twenty or thirty copies which we would wish to be distributed amongst the agents, missionaries, &c., to whom our circular should be directed; and yet that distribution would be very useful for our object. All the American languages, as far as they have been investigated, though differing in many respects, have strongly marked common characters; and the analysis of the Mexican and other languages, contained in our first volume, would point out the direction to be pursued in the investigation of the structure of the languages of our own Indians better than any general views that we might suggest. Whether these considerations may be deemed sufficient to induce you to purchase the requisite number of copies, though but a subordinate point, is submitted to your judgment.

I have, &c.

GALLATIN TO J. R. INGERSOLL, M.C.

NEW YORK, March 25, 1846.

DEAR SIR,-I received yesterday your letter of the 21st, in which you invite me to communicate my views on the tariff.

I have not attended to that subject since the year 1832, and have not the documents necessary to form an opinion on the details of the bill proposed by the Secretary of the Treasury. I have seen in the newspapers the bill and his annual report at the opening of the session, but not the documents annexed to it. At the time when the Act of 1842 was passed, the renewal of the minimum provision, and the exaggerated duties on sugar, iron, woollen goods, and some other items, appeared to me highly objectionable. But with the practical operation of that tariff I am but very imperfectly acquainted.

I have not been out of my house since the month of November, and I have no one to assist me in seeking and selecting, in public or private libraries, the requisite documents. Finally, I could not, if I had them, undertake at this time the arduous labor of arranging (and occasionally correcting) all the facts, not only found in official documents, but including also many respecting commerce and manufactures, which must be derived from private information. It is only from a thorough investigation of all the well-ascertained facts that can be obtained that I ever was able to draw any legitimate inferences. It may be otherwise with men more sagacious or bolder than I am, but if I have ever produced anything perspicuous and useful, it has uniformly been the result of long experience or of arduous and persevering labor. On the present occasion, I could only allude to some general principles, which alone are not sufficient to solve in a satisfactory manner the important problem of a permanent tariff.

I was, as far as I know, the earliest public advocate in America of the principles of free trade, and I have seen no cause to change my opinion, which has, on the contrary, been corroborated by the experience and the discussions, at home or abroad, of the sixty years which have since elapsed.

I agree, therefore, with the Secretary of the Treasury in considering a revenue tariff as a proper general basis; and he has defined it in a felicitous manner. But it is also necessary that the proposed tariff should not only receive the approbation of the present Congress, but also be such as may secure as far as practicable its permanency; for perpetual changes and uncertainty are amongst the most serious obstacles to the progressive development of national enterprise and industry. This end cannot be attained without some mutual concessions; and, for the sake of harmony and permanency, I would be willing to concede to a certain extent. Yet if the average rate of duty which the revenue requires should be from twenty to twentyfive [per] cent., I really think that manufactures which require a larger than that incidental protection must generally be considered as unnatural, forced, hot-house products.

There may be some few exceptions, respecting which I can only repeat that I am not sufficiently informed. You have, however, pointed out in the proposed bill two subjects which appeared to you exceptionable; and as they had struck me in the same way, I will confine my observations to these.

The first is, the principle adopted by the Secretary of the Treasury to convert all specific duties into duties ad valorem.

It is certainly necessary for a full understanding of the subject to ascertain the value of the various species of merchandise imported. It is the most important element in forming an estimate of the proper rate of duties under any tariff whatever: it is exclusively the basis of that which has been called a horizontal tariff. But so different are the views taken of the same subject by different minds, that there had been to this day a constant effort on the part of Congress and of those who administered the financial department to substitute whenever it was practicable specific for duties ad valorem. The only reason I can perceive for the proposed change is that the specific duty can hardly ever correspond with precision with the ad valorem duty for which it is substituted. For in almost all cases it is impossible to distinguish every variety of the same article so as to impose on each variety a distinct duty proportionate to its value; and, moreover, the same identical article varies in value from year to year,

according to the variations in supply and demand. This objection may have some weight with those who contend for perfect uniformity, and who, in order to be consistent, should insist on laying the same rate of duty, according to its value, not only on every article now charged with a specific duty, but also on all those which are now imported free of duty. When this principle is abandoned and when various rates of duty are still proposed as heretofore, it seems to me that the objection loses almost all its force, and that, the principle of uniformity being set aside, an approximation is all that is necessary; that, for instance, the same duty may, without the slightest practical inconvenience, be laid on brown sugar, whether it comes from Cuba or Jamaica, from the East or from the West Indies, and notwithstanding any permanent or fluctuating difference in the prime cost of either.

March 28. I had gone thus far when I received last night the report of the Secretary of the Treasury of 3d December, 1845, together with the accompanying papers and tables, a huge volume of nine hundred and fifty-seven pages. This document would alone have been sufficient to satisfy me, had I not been already fully sensible of it, that a thorough investigation of the subject is a task altogether beyond my strength. You cannot expect anything from me but some desultory observations. I place more confidence in the opinion I entertain respecting the propriety of specific duties than in any other in which I may differ from the Secretary of the Treasury, and will now resume the subject where I left.

It must be admitted that, considered only as an abstract proposition, duties ad valorem come nearer ideal perfection than specific duties. I contend at the same time that, whenever the nature of the article taxed is such that a specific duty may be laid which will on an average be an approximation of the rate of duty ad valorem intended to be imposed on such article, the want of perfect precision is but a subordinate consideration when compared with the great practical advantages of specific duties.

Amongst the articles now subject to specific duties there is none apparently less susceptible of that form than manufactures

of silk. A single glance at the statement of imports for 1845 (D, page 55), in which the weight of those not specified is 763,463 pounds, and their value 7,791,285 dollars, shows that a duty of one dollar per pound is nearly equal to one of ten per cent. on the value; and we find accordingly in the same line of the same table that the present duty of two dollars and a half on the pound is equivalent to a duty of 24.27 per cent. on the value. In the statement of the commerce of the United States for the year ending 30th June, 1844, the weight of the same description of goods is stated at 634,426 pounds, and their value at 6,208,239 dollars, which makes the duty of two dollars and a half per pound equivalent to one of 25.55 per cent. on the value. The average of both makes the same duty per pound equivalent to one of 24.91 per cent. on the value. If, therefore, it be intended to lay a duty of 35 per cent. on the value of those manufactures, a specific duty of three dollars and a half per pound will be nearly its equivalent. Two objections may be made to this. The first, and, as I think, the only one which has any weight, is that the various manufactures of silk charged with a uniform specific duty do differ in value; and if the difference was considerable the objection would be fatal. But with respect to silk, the value of the raw material is so great, and in all silk tissues the difference in the labor bestowed on their various species so comparatively small, that it may for all practical purposes be neglected. Silk stockings are not subject to the same rule, and should be charged with a distinct specific duty.

The other objection, derived from the difference of the value of the same article in different years, appears to me not only to be groundless, but, on the contrary, to afford an argument in favor of the constant specific duty. Those fluctuations are not the consequence of an alteration in the prime cost or intrinsic value of the article, but of the variations in the annual crops of agricultural products, or of other incidental causes affecting the ratio of supply to actual demand. A duty ad valorem varying with those fluctuations is somewhat analogous to the sliding scale of the British corn duty, but its operation is the reverse. England the duty was lessened in proportion as the price of the corn rose higher. A duty ad valorem, whether on corn, sugar,

In