wiser for the nation to make the loan popular, treating it as
sacred, and thus save twenty or thirty millions in interest annually by
reducing interest one per cent, than to attempt to save two thirds that
amount by taxes, which would inspire lenders with distrust, injure the
credit of the nation, and weaken its resources in a future exigency.

TAXES ON GROSS RECEIPTS.

The Commission, while they condemn charges on transportation, continue
for the present nine millions in taxes on the gross receipts of
steamers, ships, and railways, which it would be wise to relinquish at
the earliest moment. The railways to earn one dollar must charge two,
which doubles these taxes to the public, and adds to the cost of
delivering each ton of coal and each bushel of grain at the seaports, so
that our internal commerce now presents the strange anomaly of Indian
corn selling at one dollar per bushel in Boston, and at thirty-six cents
in Chicago, or less than the price in gold before the Insurrection.
Such charges are an incubus on trade, and may wisely be abandoned.

PROVINCIAL COMMERCE.

For the past ten years the Central and Eastern States have drawn large
supplies of breadstuffs, animals, lumber, and other materials for our
manufactures, from the Provinces; and under the Treaty of Reciprocity
our fisheries have grown vastly in importance. The whole amount of this
commerce, including the outfits and returns of the fishermen, is close
upon $100,000,000, and the tonnage of arrivals and departures exceeds
7,000,000 tons. Under the Treaty we have imported Canadian and Morgan
horses, oats for their support, barley of superior quality for our ale,
lustre-wool for our alpacas, and boards and clapboards for our houses
and for the fences and corn-cribs of our Western prairies. Indeed, the
facilities for communicating with the Provinces are so great, that for
some years past we have imported potatoes, coal, gypsum, and building
stone to supply the wants of New York and New England. Is it wise, then,
to cripple this growing trade by placing a duty of fifty per cent on the
spruce and pine we require for the new houses whose construction the war
has delayed, and by denying to Maine and Massachusetts the privilege of
sending their pine down the Aroostook and St. John, as those who own
townships on the waters of the Penobscot propose?

When Mr. Sumner moved the repeal of the Treaty, it was upon the ground
that it prevented us from levying a