to amend the law by making
what remains undisposed of payable at a more distant day.

Should it be necessary, in any view that Congress may take of the
subject, to revise the existing tariff of duties, I beg leave to say
that in the performance of that most delicate operation moderate
counsels would seem to be the wisest. The Government under which it is
our happiness to live owes its existence to the spirit of compromise
which prevailed among its framers; jarring and discordant opinions could
only have been reconciled by that noble spirit of patriotism which
prompted conciliation and resulted in harmony. In the same spirit the
compromise bill, as it is commonly called, was adopted at the session of
1833. While the people of no portion of the Union will ever hesitate to
pay all necessary taxes for the support of Government, yet an innate
repugnance exists to the imposition of burthens not really necessary for
that object. In imposing duties, however, for the purposes of revenue
a right to discriminate as to the articles on which the duty shall be
laid, as well as the amount, necessarily and most properly exists;
otherwise the Government would be placed in the condition of having to
levy the same duties upon all articles, the productive as well as the
unproductive. The slightest duty upon some might have the effect of
causing their importation to cease, whereas others, entering extensively
into the consumption of the country, might bear the heaviest without any
sensible diminution in the amount imported. So also the Government may
be justified in so discriminating by reference to other considerations
of domestic policy connected with our manufactures. So long as the
duties shall be laid with distinct reference to the wants of the
Treasury no well-founded objection can exist against them. It might
be esteemed desirable that no such augmentation of the taxes should
take place as would have the effect of annulling the land-proceeds
distribution act of the last session, which act is declared to be
inoperative the moment the duties are increased beyond 20 per cent, the
maximum rate established by the compromise act. Some of the provisions
of the compromise act, which will go into effect on the 30th day of June
next, may, however, be found exceedingly inconvenient in practice under
any regulations that Congress may adopt. I refer more particularly to
that relating to the home valuation. A difference in value of the same
articl