Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I think anyone who has listened to the debate on this bill will be satisfied that it is not a measure for increasing the public revenue. Whatever may be alleged generally as the opinion of some of the members of the ComFinance, yet wherever a single item has come up for discussion, wherever any point in the bill has been subjected to criticism, it has been found that the duty laid is a duty for some other purpose and not for revenue. Is the duty on iron or steel laid for revenue? or wool or coal or nickel? No one pretends it. The salient feat ures of a socalled protective policy has characterized every part of the debate on this whole bill; has been the burden of every speech, the argument of every plea. Now, sir, the amendment which is pending increasing the duty or putting rather a prohibition on the importation of hemp, might benefit some of theoof the State that I rePresent. It might enable them to charge a higher price for their hemp and require the balance of the community to pay to them the impost thus indirectly levied. But, sir, because it would benefit a portion of my constituents is no reason why I should approve or sustain a species of legislation that I think wrong in principle. I shall therefore not vote i. for the amendment increasing duties on emo. would seem to me, sir, as if those who favor protection as a principle might be content to levy their discriminations against this or that class within the limits of a revenue tariff under the extraordinary surroundings which by virtue of internal taxes go to render its duties necessarily high. Under that disguise they might, perhaps, successfully pluck other sections for a number of years to come, and it would be difficult to expose the injustice in such wise as to force its correction by an appeal to the country. But success hith erto has emboldened the rings who find a profit in this species of legislation to clamor or still greater duties, and the result is a still further concession and a still higher tariff. The ComFinance make a boast that they have had all these interests before them. Sir, we might have imagined that from the bill that has been reported. But they do not tell us that they have had before them any of those who are to pay these bounties on manufactures, or those who protest against this unfair and unequal legislation. This question as it stands is in very truth a question not so much of protection as it is a question of prohibition. It is to exclude from importation, and thereby to reduce the revenue derived from the tariff; not to increase that revenue by larger collections on imports, there. by to enable us to reduce the taxes on internal productions. If there were no other reason, therefore, I should be compelled to vote against the bill on that ground alone. I think, however, there are a great many other reasons in the case. I am perfectly familiar with the argument which has been adduced all along, that if you will only give protection to manufactures you will thereby build them up and enable them to reduce the price of these articles which they manufacture; but it is a singular characteristic of this whole scheme as now Presented in national legislation that you inf today all these manufactures, which for 20 years you have been building up, asking higher rates of duty than they did in their infancy. You find the manufactures that go into all the uses of domestic life, such as the iron manufactures, the wool manufactures, the worsteds and cot tons and chemicals, asking higher rates of prohibitory duty than they have ever asked here tofore. If that is to be the result of a continuation of protection, I think the sooner we get rid of the system the better. At all events, I think it is a very conclusive argument, going to show that there is no truth in what is alleged is its general tenor and effect. I think, sir, that a system of prohibition such as we are asked to enact here today is neither more nor less than a legalized plunder. It is a wrongful taking out of the pockets of one man to put in the pockets of another. Tt is making lawful that which every morality condemns as wrongful. It is statutory theft and pillage. That is my judgment about the whole prohibit ory system. We have just emerged, Mr. President, from a long and exciting conflict, in which we have labored to get rid of one system of opPression; we have abolished slavery in so far as it relates to personal bondage; but, sir, in my opinion, the measure now before you in its principle, and to a very large extent in its applications, is neither more nor less than the incipient reestablishment of slavery in another shape. It is a slavery to capital, a servitude which will be just as onerous, just as trying to this nation, and just as productive of evil consequences to the opPressed classes and sections as ever was any other form or type of slavery.