y of the entire product, while our own law has imposed a duty of
five cents in gold upon it. This abandoned tradesman declares that he
must have a large profit to cover risks in holding such articles as tea
and coffee, when trade is unsettled and gold falling; and asserts that
he makes no more on tea now than he did in the days when it cost Mr.
Smith only thirty-five or forty cents a pound. The duty of twenty-five
cents, and the withdrawal and destruction by privateers of many ships
formerly engaged in the trade, have brought up the price of tea, and the
grocer is none the richer, though Mr. Smith is considerably the poorer.

Equally unblushing is the butcher,--a man who ought to have finer
feelings and some sense of remorse. Steak, he tells us, is thirty,
second cut of the rib twenty-eight, mutton twenty-eight, and poultry
thirty cents a pound, because, as he pretends, the farmers exhausted
their supply of cattle in feeding the army for so long a time, and now
find it more profitable to raise their lambs, and keep and shear their
sheep, than to kill them. To which he adds a note in the minor key
concerning the price of gold, and the increased expenses of living,
which he has himself to meet, and drives us in despair to the pitiless
merchant of whom we buy our dry-goods. _He_ evidently expects Mr. Smith,
for he says, with a shameless frankness and readiness: "I admit that I
have doubled my prices, but fifty per cent of the rise is due to the
premium on gold. Then there come in the war duties, and then the
internal revenue taxes. Don't you know that Congress has put taxes on
the materials, and upon every process of manufacture, and a further tax
of six per cent on sales, to say nothing of stamps and licenses? Look at
the report of the Revenue Commission,[F] which tells us that most of the
duties are duplicated, till they lap over like shingles and slates, and
come to ten or twenty per cent on manufactures. Look at their story of
the umbrella! Think of Webster's Spelling-Book printed in London for our
schools, to evade the taxes! Think of the men who go to Montreal,
Halifax, and even to London, for new suits, in consequence of the
duties, and of others who once came to me quarterly for a new coat and
gave away their worn garments, and who now come yearly! Please examine
this bill for coal at fifteen dollars instead of six dollars a ton, and
do not forget the city, State, and national taxes."

Incensed to the last degree b