ABSTRACT
In order to appreciate satisfactorily the proceedings of Congress and the policy of the administration with regard to the tariff and the principle of protection, it is necessary to understand the financial condition of the Treasury. The proposition to reduce the duties on teas - which belonged to the class of unprotected articles - was referred, in the Senate, to the Finance Committee. It was submitted by them to the Secretary of the Treasury for his opinion, and he reported that he did not consider the reduction expedient, because teas belonged to those articles which, as he said "will always be a source of revenue". Against a system so unjust, unequal, and oppressive, the taxpaying people of the United States, those who receive no portion of the bounties of the protecting system, the people of the Southern States, those whom he in part represented on this floor, must forever protest.
