The revenue from registration, stamps, and public domains is thus distributed : Registration is the necessary mode of authenticating various private acts and events, and it is imposed chiefly with a view to revenue. All judicial and magisterial acts are required to be recorded for this purpose, as well as for perpetuating evidence. Stamps are of two sorts-the one, impressions stamped by government officers on paper, which is required to be used for certain classes of documents; and the other, movable stamps, like the revenue stamps of the United States, which are used and cancelled in the same manner. The receipts for sale of property and other income from the public domains are of a miscellaneous character, and of small amount, and need not be specified. The chief produce of the royal forests is wood and timber, the sale of which yielded the considerable sum of eight millions of dollars. Customs duties and salt.―This head of the revenue is divided into import duties on Navigation dues... Sundry customs duties.... ... Duty on the consumption of salt, collected through the customhouse.... $14, 439 200 7,058, 600 2,285,000 23, 782, 800 82, 000 832, 600 278,000 4, 509, 600 29, 485, 000 Indirect taxes are thus distributed : Duties on beverages...... Duties on consumption of salt, not collected at the custom-house, Duties on domestic sugar.. Produce of government sale of tobacco. Sundry and miscellaneous duties. Produce of government sale of gunpowder... Under the head of sundry revenues are the following: Revenue from the universities... Revenue from Algeria..... Sums reserved and saved from civil pensions.. Increase of sinking fund.... $42, 685, 400 1,683, 000 11, 786, 000 45, 295, 600 2,550, 800 11, 599, 600 115, 600, 400 $571, 700 3, 850, 000 2, 915, 740 19, 104, 549 26, 441, 989 12 Among the miscellaneous taxes ($11,736,360) are taxes on estates in mortmain; on patents for inventions; on telegraphs; profits in new issue of bronze currency; revenues from prisons and houses of correction, &c., &c The following classification seems to us to present the sources of revenue more clearly than that adopted in the French budget: Direct taxes, ownership and use of land and buildings, poll taxes, licenses, &c... Registration, stamps, &c... Royal forests (wood and timber sold). Customs duties on foreign merchandise. Exports, navigation, and other miscellaneous customs duties... Sugar, import duties on colonial... Sugar, import duties on foreign.. $7,058, 000 $63, 072, 280 81, 537, 883 8,051, 300 14, 439, 200 1, 192, 600 21, 129, 600 Sugar, excise duties on domestic.. 4, 509, 600 6, 192, 600 42, 685, 400 45, 295, 400 2,550, 800 11, 599, 600 14, 482, 000 3, 850, 000 19, 104, 549 15, 223, 800 350, 407, 212 It will be seen by the foregoing analysis that direct taxes, registration, stamps, customs duties, sugar, beverages, and tobacco, yielded more than seventy-six per cent. of the whole revenue, in the following proportions: direct taxes eighteen per cent.; registration and stamps, twenty-three per cent.; customs duties, (excluding sugar,) four and a half per cent.; sugar, six per cent.; beverages, twelve per cent.; and tobacco, thirteen per cent. The deficit in the French budget for 1864 is reported at about 50,000,000 francs. Comparing the French with the English revenue system, we observe the same exemption from taxation of home industry, especially of those manufactures which find a market in foreign countries. Land is subjected to heavier burdens in France than in England, and the freedom of occupation and action is restrained by heavier exactions in the way of licenses, stamps, and registrations. The revenue derived from foreign imports is trifling in comparison with the customs revenue of Great Britain. The appetites and indulgences of the people are reached alike in both countries by heavy taxes on sugar, beverages, and tobacco, and in both the post office is made to contribute a large revenue. Of the two systems, the nature and details of which we have thus briefly sketched, the English is the only one which especially commends itself to the attention of the American investigator; and this system, the result of a long experience in the economy of taxation and national development, and for the perfecting of which the best efforts of British statesmen for at least the last quarter of a century have been assiduously given, affords, in the opinion of the commission, some indications for determining what ought to be the future revenue policy of the United States. And in saying this the commission do not wish to be understood as recommending any servile imitation of details, for nothing seems more evident than that a revenue system for a particular country cannot be framed theoretically or copied from any other, but must in every case be adapted to the resources of the country for which it is designed, and the fiscal aptitudes and capacity of its people. Thus, upon no one point are writers on the theory of taxation better agreed than that taxation of raw materials is to be avoided as far as possible; but yet, with the experience and practice of the government of British India in respect to opium, saltpetre, and shellac; of Holland in respect to the coffee, spices, and sugar of Java and Sumatra; of China with her tea; Portugal with her wines, and Peru with her guano, it would be hardly the part of wisdom and sound policy for the United States to legislate on general principles only in respect to articles of which they, like the nations referred to, have also a virtual monopoly, and for the supply of which other territories than their own are dependent. THE NATIONAL REVENUE SYSTEM. The diffuseness of the present revenue system of the United States is doubtless one of its greatest imperfections, and under it the exemption of any article from taxation is the exception rather than the rule. To assert this, however, is no reflection on the judgment or skill of its authors. The system was framed under circumstances of such pressing necessity as to afford but little opportunity for any careful and accurate investigation of the sources of revenue; but it La most certainly accomplished the attainment of the end designed, namely, the raising of revenue, and the country to-day is undoubtedly receiving by taxation far more revenue than is necessary for its legitimate expenditures. As a Fuccess, therefore, our present revenue system is a most honorable testimonial not only to the wisdom of its authors, but to the patriotism of the people, who Lot only endured but welcomed the burdens it imposed upon them. A system of taxation, however, so diffuse as the present one, necessarily entalls a system of duplication of taxes, which in turn leads to an undue enhancement of prices, a decrease both of production and consumption, and consequently of wealth, a restriction of exportations and of foreign commerce, and a large Lcrease in the machinery and expense of the revenue collection. In respect to the injurious influence of this duplication of taxes upon the industry of the country the commission cannot speak too strongly. Its effect has already been most injurious. It threatens the very existence-even with the protection of inflated prices and a high tariff-of many branches of industry; and, with a return of the trade and currency of the country to anything approxi Eating ite normal condition, it must, by checking development, prove highly disastrous. The influence of the duplication of taxes in sustaining prices is also, in the pinion of the commission, far greater than those not conversant with the subjeet generally estimate; and were the price of gold and of the national currency made at once to approximate, and the present revenue system to continue unchanged, it would be impossible for the prices of most products of manufac ning industry to return to anything like their former level. In proof of this the commission ask attention to the following illustrations: By section 94 of the act of June 30, 1864, a tax of five per cent. (or its equivalent in specific duties) was imposed upon the sale of most of the industrial products of the country; lumber, breadstuffs, maple and sorghum sirups and gar, whale and fish oils, and a few other articles, excepted. By the amended act of March 3, 1865, an increase of twenty per cent. was made to the above rates, making the present general manufacturing excise tax 1 per cent. ad valorem on the sale prices of the product. Under the operation of this law the government now levies and collects from ezi: to fifteen per cent. (and even in some instances twenty per centum) on But every finished industrial product. In order to fully understand the reason of such conclusions, it must be borne in mind that but comparatively few products of manufacturing industry come to the consumer as the result of one process, but that the finished product is almost always an aggregate of several distinct and separate manufacturing processes. A good illustration of this principle, and of the working of the revenue laws in respect to the same, drawn from one of the many statements of experience submitted to the commission, is presented in the manufacture of umbrellas and parasols, as carried on in the cities of New York and Philadelphia. It was formerly the practice of umbrella-makers to manufacture the main constituents of their product as one business; but now the business of an umbrella manufacturer is rather to assemble the various constituents of an umbrella or parasol, which are made separately, and in different parts of the country. Thus, for example, the sticks, when of wood, are made in Philadelphia and in Connecticut, part of native and part of foreign wood, on which last a duty may have been paid. If the supporting-rod is of iron or steel, it is the product of still another establishment. In like manner the handles of carved wood, bone, or ivory, the brass runners, the tips, the elastic band, the rubber of which the band is composed, the silk tassels, the buttons, and the cover of silk, gingham, or alpaca, are all distinct products of manufacture; and each of these constituents, if of domestic production, pays a tax when sold of six per cent. ad valorem, or its equivalent. The umbrella manufacturer now aggregates all these constituent parts, previously taxed, into a finished product, and then pays six per centum on the whole. It is therefore evident that under the present excise system all the parts of the umbrella are taxed at least twice, and in some instances three times, thus adding from twelve to fifteen per cent. to the cost of the umbrella direct; while we may feel certain, moreover, that each separate manufaeturer makes the payment of the six per cent. tax on his special product an occasion for adding from one to three per centum additional to its cost price. In some instances known to the commission this addition, thus made by the manufacturer, by reason of the payment of his general manufacturing tax, has amounted to over six per cent. Again, in the case of books, pamphlets, &c., a tax imposed on which, being a tax upon knowledge, can only be justified on the grounds of imperative necessity, it is claimed that, including licenses and income tax, the finished book, and its constituent materials, pay from twelve to fifteen distinct taxes before it reaches the reader. Every separate item that enters into the book—paper, cloth, boards, glue, thread, gold-leaf, leather, and type material-pays from three to six per cent. in the first instance, and then five per cent. on the whole combined; and this not upon the cost of the manufactured article, but upon the price at which it is sold. On cotton fabrics the tax now levied and collected ranges, according to the quality of the goods, from nine to fourteen cents per pound. On refined sugars, the tax on gross sales, by reason of an inequality of adjustment between the tariff and the excise, is now claimed to be nearly equivalent to all the additional value conferred upon them in refining by all the labor employed therein. Other articles, such as wagons, locomotives, &c., might equally well be cited as illustrations. Such a system as this violates all the fundamental principles of taxation, inasmuch as the taxes are neither definite in amount, equal in application, nor convenient of collection. While this system prevails, furthermore, it seems useless to talk of reducing prices to anything like their former level, by a reduction or contraction of the currency. A similar duplication of taxation to that above described must, in the opinion of the commission, also attend the adoption of a tax on sales, which at present seems to find much favor throughout the country. Local taxes on industrial circulation in every State, county, township, and village of the Union would be confessedly calamitons; but they could not be as bad as a frontier drawn around exch individual in the nation, over which nothing could pass in or out, not smitten with a tax-repeated at each border. Another matter of more serious importance, in its bearing upon the industry of the country, than the duplication of taxes, is the lack of equalization or adjustment between the tariff and the excise. This subject, which the commission, from lack of time, have not been able to investigate as fully as they desired, but upon which they propose to present a special report, demands the serious and prompt attention of Congress. The ture of this inequality can be better illustrated by example than by argument. We take as before, and as offering the most striking illustrations, the cases of the umbrella and the book industries. In the case of the umbrella and parasol manufacture, the cover, as a constituent element of construction, represents from ase half to two-thirds the entire cost of the finished article. The silk, the alpaca, and the Scotch gingham, of which the covers are made, are all imported; the former paying a duty of sixty per cent., and the latter two about fifty per cent. ad valorem; the variation being slight on the quality of texture. The ma iufactured umbrella, covered with the same material, whose constituent parts are not taxed, either on the material used in their fabrication or on their sale, is. however, admitted under the present tariff at a duty of thirty-five per cent. ad valorem, or at a discriminating duty against the American and in favor of the foreign producer of from fifteen to twenty-five per cent. If we make allowance for the various United States internal revenue taxes, it is claimed by the American manufacturers that the discrimination in favor of the foreign producer fully equal to forty per cent. It needs hardly to be added, that during the past six months imported umbrellas have been sold at auction in New York and Boston, with the original cost, duty, freight, and charges paid in gold, for a less price than the American article can be manufactured; or that the business of aking umbrellas and parasols in New York and Philadelphia, involving a capital of $2,000,000, and employing the labor of some five thousand persons, a majority of whom are females, is threatened with utter destruction. In two mstances cited to the commission, umbrella manufacturers have closed their factories in the United States, and, with a view of exporting to this country, have transferred their capital and skill to Europe. In a communication subEited to the commission by a committee of umbrella manufacturers, they state that, unless relief is speedily obtained, we can perceive no other possible e arse to pursue but the alternative of retiring entirely from the field, and leaving is to foreign hands." In the case of books, the commission quote from a recent circular from a leadng member of this trade: "In England, books, papers, &c., are especially exempted from taxation. Here there is 4. v of thirty-five per cent. on sized book-papers, and an internal revenue tax equal to koodejaven per cent, on books, including the tax on paper and on the difference between the host and the wholesale price, while the duty on imported books is only twenty-five per With all these odds against us, the English manufacturer should be able to pay his es and and his books in New York or Boston at about one-half the price at which we ake them here, to wit: His paper costs him only one-third what paper costs here; his a. m.sterials less than one-half, while we pay an amount about equal to his duties in cafevenue; even more, for he invoices his goods at cost, or nearly so, sending them to kaown house here, while our tax is upon every separate item that enters into the book. An average book would, perhaps, take one pound of paper, |