which has been already furnished in the instance of molasses on the exportation of distilled spirits.
Cocoa, the raw material, now pays a duty of 1 cent per pound while chocolate, which is a prevailing and very simple manufacture is comprised in the mass of articles rated at no more than 5 per cent.
There would appear to be a propriety in encouraging the manufacture by a somewhat higher duty on its foreign rival than is paid on the raw material. Two cents per pound on imported chocolate would, it is presumed, be without inconvenience.
The foregoing beads comprise the most important of the several kinds of manufactures which have occurred as requiring and at the same time as most proper for public encouragement, and such measures for affording it as have appeared best calculated to answer the end have been suggested.
The observations which have accompanied this delineation of objects supersede the necessity of many supplementary remarks. One or two, however, may not be altogether superfluous.
Bounties are in various instances proposed as one species of encouragement.
It is a familiar objection to them that they are difficult to be managed, and liable to frauds. But neither that difficulty nor this danger seems sufficiently great to countervail the advantages of which they are productive, when rightly applied. And it is presumed to have been shown that they are, in some cases, particularly in the infancy of new enterprises, indispensable.
It will, however, be necessary to guard with extraordinary circumspection the manner of dispensing them. The requisite precautions have been thought of, but to enter into the detail would swell this report, already voluminous, to a size too inconvenient.
If the principle shall not be deemed inadmissible the means of avoiding an abuse of it will not be likely to present insurmountable obstacles. There are useful guides from practice in other quarters.
It shall, therefore, only be remarked here in relation to this point that any bounty which may be applied to the manufacture of an article can not, with safety, extend beyond those manufactories at which the making of the article is a regular trade. It would be impossible to annex adequate precautions to a benefit of that nature, if extended to every private family in which the manufacture was incidentally carried on; and its being a merely incidental occupation, which engages a portion of time that would otherwise be lost, it can be advantageously carried on without so special an aid.
The possibility of a diminution of the revenue may also present itself as an objection to the arrangements which have been submitted.
But there is no truth which may be more firmly relied upon than that the interests of the revenue are promoted by whatever promotes an increase of national industry and wealth.
In proportion to the degree of these is the capacity of every country to contribute to the public treasury, and where the capacity to pay is increased, or even is not decreased, the only consequence of measures which diminish any particular resource is a change of the object. If by encouraging the manufacture of an article at home the revenue which has been wont to accrue from its importation should be lessened, an indemnification can easily be found either out of the man
