Debate on the Sugar Duty

The following remarks were made in the House of Representatives on the 5th inst.:

Mr. Taylor, of Louisiana, regretted that the House was called upon to decide upon the dangerous questions involved in this bill in a manner far too hasty for safety. He referred to the past legislation of Congress upon the subject of the tariff, and showed that the greatest increase in the production of sugar had taken place in Louisiana and Cuba, and that its greatest increase of consumption was in Great Britain and the United States. Gentlemen had said that the production of sugar In the country was not equal to his consumption; but it was his opinion that if they were well acquainted with its cultivation they would think that it was just as likely to meet the demand as any branch of manufacture.

Mr. Colfax, of Indiana, spoke in favor of free sugar; and while thanking the Majority of the Ways and Means Committee for allowing him argue for the sugar consumers before them while preparing their tariff, and for the reduction they propose to t-n percent., urged that the change should not be a partial, but an entire one. He intended that the sugar duly was not needed for revenue purposes, the treasury being already overflowing; mid that as a practical experiment, having been tried for sixty years, it had utterly failed, the crop having virtually run out. He argued that one eighth of the whole tariff receipts last year were collected from sugar and molasses, making twenty five millions of consumers pay a lax as needless as oppressive; that the total horns product was not one-sixth of the consumption; that New Orleans itself imported twenty-five million pounds of foreign sugar last year, and Baltimore forty-three millions; that the whole crop of the country was insufficient to supply the farmers of the Mississippi Valley alone, leaving the remainder of the whole country to draw their supply from abroad; that more duty had been paid on imported sugar last year than the whole amount raised in this country would have cost at Havana, and that it would therefore have been a saving to have repealed the tax and given the whole amount as a bounty to the sugar planters to consent to the repeal, that if the Chinese sugar cane recently introduced proved half as valuable as is claimed for it, sugar would not need protection any more than corn or cord wood. He expressed th opinion that if the question of free sugar was submitted to the voters of every Congressional district in the Union, not twenty out of 234 would vote no.