Note 40 — NINTH CONGRESS.—FIRST SESSION. PROCEEDINGS AND DEBATES IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. (continued 7)

The error which now prevails (with so many) on the subject of the fishing bounties and allowances, is one which strongly illustrates the evil in our legislators, of not being sufficiently acquainted with our early Congressional history. They are now held by many—by enough to prevent their repeal—to be bounties out of the Treasury for the encouragement of the fisheries as a nursery of seamen, when their whole history proves that they were denied when asked on that ground, (bounties out of the Treasury to any branch of industry being equally unconstitutional and impolitic,) and only granted on the principle of drawback—as a refunding of duty paid on foreign salt exported on fish; and as such applied at first to all salted provisions, both beef and pork as well as to fish. And as such drawback these bounties and allowances rose and fell with the salt tax as long as national legislation was under the control of our earlier generation of statesmen; but since near thirty years this dependence of the bounties and allowances upon the salt tax has ceased to be known, and, while the duty has been undergoing reductions, the bounties and allowances have remained at the highest rate they ever attained when the salt duty was at its highest rate. The want of this knowledge has cost the public treasury some millions of dollars; and is still costing it some hundreds of thousands annually.