e favors and privileges which all others may
not enjoy. It was the purpose of its illustrious founders to base the
institutions which they reared upon the great and unchanging principles
of justice and equity, conscious that if administered in the spirit in
which they were conceived they would be felt only by the benefits which
they diffused, and would secure for themselves a defense in the hearts
of the people more powerful than standing armies and all the means and
appliances invented to sustain governments founded in injustice and
oppression.

The well-known fact that the tariff act of 1842 was passed by a majority
of one vote in the Senate and two in the House of Representatives, and
that some of those who felt themselves constrained, under the peculiar
circumstances existing at the time, to vote in its favor, proclaimed its
defects and expressed their determination to aid in its modification on
the first opportunity, affords strong and conclusive evidence that it
was not intended to be permanent, and of the expediency and necessity of
its thorough revision.

In recommending to Congress a reduction of the present rates of duty and
a revision and modification of the act of 1842, I am far from
entertaining opinions unfriendly to the manufacturers. On the contrary,
I desire to see them prosperous as far as they can be so without
imposing unequal burdens on other interests. The advantage under any
system of indirect taxation, even within the revenue standard, must be
in favor of the manufacturing interest, and of this no other interest
will complain.

I recommend to Congress the abolition of the minimum principle, or
assumed, arbitrary, and false values, and of specific duties, and the
substitution in their place of _ad valorem_ duties as the fairest and
most equitable indirect tax which can be imposed. By the _ad valorem_
principle all articles are taxed according to their cost or value, and
those which are of inferior quality or of small cost bear only the just
proportion of the tax with those which are of superior quality or
greater cost. The articles consumed by all are taxed at the same rate. A
system of _ad valorem_ revenue duties, with proper discriminations and
proper guards against frauds in collecting them, it is not doubted will
afford ample incidental advantages to the manufacturers and enable them
to derive as great profits as can be derived from any other regular
business. It is believed that such a sys