Mr. SCHENCK. I renewit. I have heard the speech of the gentfrom Illinois [Mr. Wasanuass] before. I was not convinced by it then, and I am not quite convinced now. We have heard the howl about being in the interest of distillers, and I suppose we are preared now to hear a bowl about being in the interest of importers. Now, as I have no particular friends among them nor any particular relations with them, I shall endeavor to consider this subject with reference precisely to its merits.. Sir, the fault is not with the importer or the manufacturer, if, when you change your laws, some men go up and others down. It is because you are continually changing your laws. And I have therefore sometimes thought that a bad tariff or a bad tax law, if it were only persistentl adhered to, would, in the long run, e.better than a great many good ones if you change from one good one to another contin equally. It is the want of consistency and uni 1 form continuity of legislation that enables some i men to make fortunes and causes others to lose I them whenever the law is changed; and the l man who expects whenever a law is changed which affects taxation, either upon imports or upon articles of produce in the country, to patch it all up by looking after this, that, or i the other interest, or on one side or the other of the line to be affected favorably or adversely l by it, will find he has undertaken a Herculean [ task. What then ‘3 The only safety is to adhere to some principle, and I hold that principle to be a very simp c one, namely, a principle founded l upon common honesty, which ought to be obl served by the Government as well as by individuals. You say at one time to your importer, “Bring certain goods into the country and this l shall be the amount of duties which shall be imi posed upon those goods.” He brings the goods ere upon the faith of your law and pays the duties. Then you change your law, and the proposition is to say to him, “ We have you in l the country; we have collected one set of duties, from on, and now we mean to collect another l set 0 duties, if we can follow up your goods and find them.” Sir, that is acting dishonestly toward your importer. When there was an at tempt made to tax the stock of whisky on hand, I had no sympathy with the distiller. And any such insinuation is liumbug, stuff. Buncombe, unworthy of legislators. But I hold that after we had said to men, “Manufacture a certain article and we will charge you 50 cents a gal lon, ” we on ht not afterward to say, “ We will follow up what you have manufactured if we can and put another tax upon it." And what is the provision proposed here? It is to compel the importer to pay the additional tax upon every article that he may have in his possession at the time this bill is passed. Why, sir, I suppose I shall have to invite the Gentfrom Illinois [Mr. WASBBURNE] own to my house to make an examination there. A friend in China was kind enough to send me some chests or boxes of tea, upon which I paid the duties. One or 2 df them are still unbroken; they are still in the hands of the importer; and the proposition is to put an additional duty upon them. And not only that, but everywhere throughout the country, wherever goods may be in 1st hands, notwithstanding they have been brought into the country in good faith, the importers trusting that the Government would not break its contracts with them, they are to be followed up and more duties collected upon them. I have no doubt that men will make fortunes and men will lose fortunes because of this legislation. But I repeat, going back to where I started, that this is the fault of continually changing the laws. And you will only make it worse, if every time you change your laws you violate the national faith and honor amendment to the amendment.