st also
be most seriously affected without the adoption of some expedient to
relieve the cash system. The warehousing system would afford that
relief, since the carrier would have a safe recourse to the public
storehouses and might without advancing the duty reship within some
reasonable period to foreign ports. A further effect of the measure
would be to supersede the system of drawbacks, thereby effectually
protecting the Government against fraud, as the right of debenture would
not attach to goods after their withdrawal from the public stores.

In revising the existing tariff of duties, should you deem it proper to
do so at your present session, I can only repeat the suggestions and
recommendations which upon several occacions I have heretofore felt it
to be my duty to offer to Congress. The great primary and controlling
interest of the American people is union--union not only in the mere
forms of government, forms which may be broken, but union founded in
an attachment of States and individuals for each other. This union in
sentiment and feeling can only be preserved by the adoption of that
course of policy which, neither giving exclusive benefits to some nor
imposing unnecessary burthens upon others, shall consult the interests
of all by pursuing a course of moderation and thereby seeking to
harmonize public opinion, and causing the people everywhere to feel and
to know that the Government is careful of the interests of all alike.
Nor is there any subject in regard to which moderation, connected with a
wise discrimination, is more necessary than in the imposition of duties
on imports. Whether reference be had to revenue, the primary object in
the imposition of taxes, or to the incidents which necessarily flow from
their imposition, this is entirely true. Extravagant duties defeat their
end and object, not only by exciting in the public mind an hostility to
the manufacturing interests, but by inducing a system of smuggling on
an extensive scale and the practice of every manner of fraud upon the
revenue, which the utmost vigilance of Government can not effectually
suppress. An opposite course of policy would be attended by results
essentially different, of which every interest of society, and none more
than those of the manufacturer, would reap important advantages. Among
the most striking of its benefits would be that derived from the general
acquiescence of the country in its support and the consequent permanency
a