Skip Skip MESSAGE FROM THE SENATE. Here the committee rose informally, and the Speaker having resumed the chair, a message from the Senate by Mr. MCDONALD, its Chief Clerk, informed the House that the Senate had passed bill of the House No. 201, to declare the meaning of certain parts of the internalrevenue act, approved June 80, 1864, and for other purposes, with amendments, in which he was directed to ask the concurrence of the House. The ComWhole on the state of the Union then resumed its session. TRADE WITH BRITISH AMERICA Again. Mr. KELLEY. Give them but that measureof protection which under the weight of taxation they bear will secure an equal chance in our markets, and they will give you an ade uate supply of coal, and in 2 or 3 years domestic competition, while it will by patronizing your railroads and carrying companies have filled your Treasury and enabled you to reduce your scale of taxation, will bring down the price of coal in all our markets. Pennsylvania, I repeat, has no special interest in this question. Her interest is that the general prosperity of the country shall be promoted. We want you manufacturers of NewEngland to clothe the men who dig and handle our coal; we want you men of the Northwest to feed the men who dig and handle our coal; and Pennsylvaniawill rejoice in her share of the general prosperity which will then bless our country. Sir, I turn to the 40th page of the letter of the SecyTreasury, embodyin the report of the revenue commissioners, an find that in the fiscal year 1865 there were imported, under the reciprocity treaty, 13, 025, 432 bushels, being 465, 194 tons of bitumine us coal, free of duty, from the British Provinces. There were imported in the same year paying a duty of $1 25 a ton 6, 131.608 bus els, being 218, 986 tons, from Englan. There were exported of domestic production, which, as I have said, was all or nearly all anthracite, 3, 708, 264 bushels, and there were exported of foreign production 25, 536 bushels, making nearly 1,000 tons. Sir, will it be said that the vast coal beds of this country cannot supply our wants, and that we cannot increase our production? Or will an gentleman say that a duty of 50 centsis enoug to protect these embarrassed but important interests? I ask gentlemen to mark the fact, that though 466, 194 tons came in under the reciprocity treaty, free of duty, from her Prov inces, England was still able to send in, and pay $1 25 duty perton, the enormous amount of 218, 986 tons. Is it not apparent from these facts that we will bankrupt every bitumine us coal company in the country ifwe pass this bill? Do gentlemen say our eman s in this be half are exorbitant, or ask why our coal cannot be sold cheaply as that of England and the Provinces? I answer them in part by another question, which is, do they wish the American miner to toil for the wages given to laborers in English collieries? Sir, the beartlessness of the capitalists of England was never more fully exposed than by the report of the parliamentary commission appointed to inquire into the condition of the mining population of the country. Englands shame is nowhere written in broader or darker colors than in that report, and I will notpermit myself to believe that any member of this House is anxious that we should emulate that page of her history. Our better wages for labor and our heavy war taxes answer the suggestion thrown out. How much England and her American Prov inces did to protruct and aggravate the war is known to all, and I am not willing they should derive advantage from their treachery. On this subject I quote a few lines from a letter fro“m an intelligent coal operator: It is almost impthsible to compute precisely the amount of revenue that Government reaps from a ton of bitumine us coal, but the fairest way to get at it will be to take the cost of putting the artie e on board vessel before the war, (or in 1860.)53 50 perton, ascomparedwith the present cost. 7 dollars perton, making unincrease in the actual cost of $3 60 perton. This increase is in the main occasioned by the taxes which have been levied in order to support the Government, (which we pay cheer fully; and theyltourli overs article of provisionsand repairs about t a minesan railroads. as well as the 2 and a half%. upon the grossrate of transportation and 5%. upon the net earnings of the carrying companies, which, when nll summed together, amount to very nearly if not quite 3 dollars perton.” Sir, we are in a transition age; and here I reply to the remark of the Gentfrom Ver mont [Mr. Monaum] that coal ought not to be protected. We are in a transition age in more senses than one. We are assing from war to peace and from the age O iron to the age of steel. In a few years, if we foster our industry, steel will supplant iron in almost all the uses to which it is now applied. Sir, coal and iron are the muscles of modern civilization; and fire ignited coal is the material force that is impel ling us onward and upward. Had the southern States had equal mastery with us of these elements, I doubt whether we would yet have made conquest over them. I query whether the result might not have been otherwise than it was. What were Vulcan and the Cyclops to an American mechanic handling a steam engine or a trip hammer? We live in a new age. Old my thologies and traditions serve but to hamperus. We must adapt ourselves to the agencies by which we are surrounded and the exigencies in which we are involved. Sir, when the consular wreath 1st graced the brow of Na oleon he had only conquered Italy, which, in tesomewhatboastful language of the historian, extended “from the Alps to the Papal dominions.” and what had he done? Wh, sir, all that Italy which he had conquered, could it be lifted bodily, could be set down comfortably within the limits of the State of Maine or of SCarolina. He had never then commanded so many men as Burnside marched through the city of Washington when taking his single corps to swell the and army of Lieutenant GenlGrant in the Wilderness. How was itthat we could move such masses of men, fight this war over the broadest theater of international or civilWar known to history, and conclude it in little more than 4 years? It was because we used coal and iron as our mus cles, and fire ignited coal as ourforce. These gave Us NewOrleans, and battered down Fort Fisher and I may add that, had there been a well stocked railroad from Moscow to the Rhine, Napoleons retreat would have been marked by fewer horrors, and the history of the 19 century would not probably have read as it does and if the chairman of the ComWays&Means desires to secure us a respectableposition among the nations, he will not strike down, disparage, or neglect the coal and iron interests of the country, to subserve any interest of his own, his State, or section. They are the primordial elements of our greatness, and should be, cherished above all others. Look at their power. Behold a woman with an iron machine before her moving noiselessl; it is impelled by coal and iron fashioned into an engine, an is doing more work in one day than 100 such women could have done in a week one century ago. Or see yonder pallid little girl attending such a machine; she will produce results in one day that would have taxed the industry of her grandmother for a year. The power of those delicate people is not superhuman; it is coal and iron that produee these more than magical results. The gentleman doubts whether the production of coal can or should be stimulated, and is willing we should depend on our most power ful and our nearest enemies for this elemental substance. The country will not respond to such purblind patriotism and the passage to this bill will reduce us to such abject dependence. In 11 months of 1865 I do not go back to 1864, but take the 1st 11 mbnths of 1865, of last year 66%. of the bitumine us coal consumed in the States east of Pennsylvania was mined by the laborers of Britain or of the British Provinces. Let me prove this. The amount of bitumine us coal received at Boston and NewYork from the British Provinces, free of duty, to the 1st of December, 1865, was 392, 158 tons. the amount of English coal received at the same points during the same period, which paid a tax of $1 25 perton, was 103, 723; total foreign coal 495, 891 tons. The amount of coal produced in the U.S., delivered during the same period at the same points, wasbut 287, 874 tons; balance in favor of foreign coal, 208, 874 tons one coal company in the British Irov inces declaring divi ends of 175%. in a year, and but one of the 100s of companies in our country able to declare a dividen of 1%., making a contrast so unfavorable to us that many O our enterprising people, as was shown yesterday by the gentlemaii from Maryland, [Mr. FTHOMAS] abandoned their country and embarked their capital in the coal regions of Nova Scotia. Can we strengthen our country by exporting enterprise, industry, and capital? and is it not marvelous that such an exhibit against us can bemnde, in view of the facts that our bitumine us coal fields are so much broader and richer than those of England and Nova Scotia combined, and that we depend for the support of our Government and its credit upon taxes derived in great part from the forge, the furnace, the foundery, the railroad, the machine shop, the coal bed, and iron mines? Are gentlemen willing to perpetuate the malign influence that has produced a state of facts so disparaging to our intelligence, patriotism, and interests? No; I believe they will agree with me that the time has arrived when we should develop our own resources, foster American labor, and guard our own interests. One elleet of the reciprocity treaty has been to send to Canada one million 500,000 immigrants who, but for the advantages it gave the Provinces over us, would have swelled our population. Let us now, by taking care of our owa people, induce them to come and share our burdens and blessings. Sir, I have said that I would not legislate with reference to the Provinces under the influence offear or hate. It would indeed be unwise, for these people will et be our countrymen. When British free tra c, preventing, as it ever does to the people of British Provinces, the diversification of their industry, shall have impoverished their soil and repelled immi gration from their shores when that system of British free trade which keeps those upon whom it is inflicted at hard labor in the reduction of white crops, has impoverished their fields as it has those of our old States, and reduced them to oft recurring bankruptcy, as it inevitably must; and when adequate protection to our labor shall have developed our boundless resources, and generous wages invited to our sheres the skilled laborers of the world, the contrast between our condition and that of the people of the Provinces will impel them to unite their destiny with ours, and then I shall, or m posterity will, be ready to greet them cordial y as compatriots. Sir, what do we getin return for the immeasarable degradation proposed by this bill? It by, sir, We get the right to navigate the StLawrence and to patronize the canals and railroads. of Canada, and the right to cut lumber mark on, “the right to cut lumber or timber ofany kind on that portion. of the American territory in the State of Maine watered by the river StJohn and its tributaries, and when floated down that river to the sea to ship the same to the U.S. from the Province of NewBruns wick without any export duty or other duty." I take it, sir, that these rights will not belong withheld from us, even if we determine to give the American laborer a fair field in which to compete with those of England and her Prov inces. Let me pause fora moment to say to the Gentleman that his statement of the amount of coal imported and exported is more plausible than candid in a respect not yet noticed. It is appraised at advalorem prices which are specie prices in the land from which it is exported; while ours is calculated at currency prices. This fact must be borne in mind in making the calculations of relative quantities. But to resume and conclude. Sir, to get these rights we give precisely the same rights in larger degree and with renter advantage to the British colonists. e will therefore get them without this bill. I do not wish to acquire them by force. Iam anxious to see them granted reciprocally by our country and the Provinces; but not as this bill does it. It can be done by treaty or by act of congress; but be that as it may, do not let us agree to destroy the fisheries of NewEngland, the salt works of WestVirginia, the lumber business of the Northwest and of Maine, and the bitumine us coal works of the whole country, as the price of the privilege of yielding more specifically and in kind than we get. No, sir; let us maintain our rights, our interests, and our countrysdignity. Lotus O on our way as though there were no British rov inces; and the mere action of British legislation, constraining their people, as I have already said, to unrequited agricultural labor, will make them sigh for our prosperity and then we shall find that the American Constitution is as elastic as it is grand and enduring. It has expanded to embrace immense tracts of territory. Our (lag has swept from the limits of the original 13 States to the Pacific, and south ward to the Rio Grande; and, sir, when the people of Canada shall, as they will if we protect our labor, ask to unite their destinies with ours, the world will receive additional proof that when Providence impelled our fathers to the creation of our GOvernment, it gave them the wisdom to bless us with a Constitution which is the fit canopy of a continent, and will yet crown one.