honorable commerce many of that class of regular and
conscientious merchants whose character throughout the world is the
pride of our country.

The remedy for these evils, is to be found in specific duties, so
far as this may be practicable. They dispense with any inquiry at the
custom-house into the actual cost or value of the article, and it pays
the precise amount of duty previously fixed by law. They present no
temptations to the appraisers of foreign goods, who receive but small
salaries, and might by undervaluation in a few cases render themselves
independent.

Besides, specific duties best conform to the requisition in the
Constitution that "no preference shall be given by any regulation of
commerce or revenue to the ports of one State over those of another."
Under our _ad valorem_ system such preferences are to some extent
inevitable, and complaints have often been made that the spirit of this
provision has been violated by a lower appraisement of the same articles
at one port than at another.

An impression strangely enough prevails to some extent that specific
duties are necessarily protective duties. Nothing can be more
fallacious. Great Britain glories in free trade, and yet her whole
revenue from imports is at the present moment collected under a system
of specific duties. It is a striking fact in this connection that in the
commercial treaty of January 23, 1860, between France and England one
of the articles provides that the _ad valorem_ duties which it imposes
shall be converted into specific duties within six months from its date,
and these are to be ascertained by making an average of the prices for
six months previous to that time. The reverse of the propositions would
be nearer to the truth, because a much larger amount of revenue would be
collected by merely converting the _ad valorem_ duties of a tariff into
equivalent specific duties. To this extent the revenue would be
increased, and in the same proportion the specific duty might be
diminished.

Specific duties would secure to the American manufacturer the incidental
protection to which he is fairly entitled under a revenue tariff, and to
this surely no person would object. The framers of the existing tariff
have gone further, and in a liberal spirit have discriminated in favor
of large and useful branches of our manufactures, not by raising the
rate of duty upon the importation of similar articles from abroad, but,
what is the same in effe