Mr. DAVIS. On page 195, line 60, after the word “ prescribe, ” move to strike out the following words: Of the number of pounds or gallons of materials used for the purpose of producing spirits. Mr. President, I never read a bill in my life with so much aversion as I have read the hill under consideration. It iIs, suppose, a necessity and a dire necessity that the country should have such a system of internalrevenue; but in all its multifarious and complicated details it throws more distrust upon the people upon whom it is to operate and more of] degraation and oppression than any measure that it has ever been my fortune to read. The whole bill and all its provisions proceed upon the general idea that all the people that it is to act upon are knaves and plonderers; and the whole machinery of the bill is studded with bonds and oaths and punishments byline and imprisonment. I presume that those features cannot be obliterated from the bill, and that the bill will have to pass with a large proportion of them in. But, sir, where it is possible to mitigate the bill by striking from it any of these obnoxious regulations I think it ought to be done, and I think that I make a.proosition of that character in the amendment which I have submitted to the Senate. The bill requires that all distillers Shall from dayto day make or cause to be made. true and exact entry in a book. to be kept in such form as the ComrIntRev i may prescribe, of the number of pounds or gallonsot‘ materials usedfor the purpose of QIQdUCln'ilDlrlu, the number of gallons ofspirits distilled. e number of gallons placed in warehouse and the proof thereof and the number of gallons sold. with the [ proof thercof and the name and placeof business or residence oi the personto whom sold. ‘1 In a page or 2 afterwards the bill proVidesI. That the owner, agent, or superintendent of any distillery establishment as licrcinbefore provided. i shall erect.in a roomor building to beprovided and usedfor that purpose and for no other, 2 or more receiving cisterns. each to be at least of sufficient capacity to hold all the spirits distilled during the day of24 hours. into one of which shall be copve ed each day all the spirits manufacturedin I said istillcry during that day; and such cisterns shall beso constructedas to leave an openspaceof l at least 3 feet between the tops thereof and the [ floor or roof above, and of not less than 18. inches between the bottoms thereof and the floor 1 below and shall be separatedin such a manneras Will enable the inspector to pnss around the same, and shall be connectedwith the outlet of the stills. i boilers or other vessels used for distilling. hysuitablo I pipes or other apparatusso copstructedas always to i e exposedto the view of the inspector. [ Now, sir, we have all heard of the coffin of Mohammed being suspended, and being sustained upon no foundation. These cisterns are l the nearest device to that cofiin of Moliammed i that I have ever heard of or met with in the l course of my readin. But to the Olllt. The distillers are to re art from day to pay the produce in liquor of t ieir distillations, and in addition to that, they are to be emptied into these cisterns, so constructed 1 that the inspectors may go all round them, and i see whether there are any false vaults below them in which liquor, I suppose, could be emptied. Where is the necessity of the distiller being required to enter upon his day book, l l I day by day and report 3 times a month to the collector, the number of pounds or gallons 1 of materials used for the purpose of producing spirits, when he is requirediuexorably to report the produce of the spirits from day to day, and he is to empty them into a cistern where it would be impossible that the whole quantity distilled should not be deposited, and upon which he would be subject to be taxed according to the rates established by the bill? feel a particular hostility to this provision from this consideration: in a county contigu ous to my own there were 4 distillers indicted for a violation of the law, and they were fined in an aggregate of exceeding $14,000. It a peared in the course of the evidence that the distillers had fairly accounted for all the liquor that they had distilled and had paid the tax upon it, not according to the proof measure established by the law, but according to wine measure, and therefore had paid more tax to the Government than they were bound to pay; and the only feature of the law that they had violated, and that through their innocent and blameless ignorance, was a failure to report. from day to day the amount of the rain that they had used in mash. In the tria of those cases that took place in the U.S. district court for hentucky a few weeks since, the distillers vindicated their perfect integrity by showing that they had accounted for every gill of liquor that they had made, and had paid the full tax upon it by wine measure; and yet they were pursued in that trial upon the charge of having violated the law which required them from day to day to enterinto shook the amount in weight of their mash. Those distillers appealed to headquarters, if I may use the term, for relief. I do not know whether they got it or not. They had no intention of violatin the law or of committing any fraud upon the ‘overnment, and they did in fact commit no fraud upon the Government. On the contrary, they accounted to the Government and paid tax upon more liquor than they had made, according to the proofs established by the law itself; and yet some sharks of odicers, by the meshes of this law, were enabled to pursue them to judgment upon the simple and innocent charge of having omitted to enter in a book from do to day the amount in pounds of grain which they had distilled; and for that simple and practically ine ffensive violation of the law, madein utter ignorance on their part, they were assessed in an aggregate amount of damages exceeding $14,000. Those distillers were mostly distilling their own grain; 2 of thein, I believe, entirely their own grain. One of them had made from 20 to 40 barrels in a domestic distillery out of corn raised upon his own farm; and the amount of fine imposed upon him exceeded the entire value of his whole crop of whisky. I never in my life have heard of any system of revenue or any system whatever connected with the collection of money, that established so many chances of sweeping oppression and robbery upon the part of the officers appointed to carry the system into execution as is embod ied in this bill and the bills of which it is the successor. The assessors and their officers laid in wait, with a knowledge of the careless man ner in which these unsophisticated and unin formed distillers were transacting their business; they knew that they were in daily and innocent violation of the law; and when their violation accumulated to such an extent that by the plunder acquired by the iniquitous and unjust enforcement of these penalties, they were enabled to enrich themselves, the harpies then ounced upon these innocent men, and had them inulcted to the extent that I have named; and that in relation to a matter in the law that was totally immaterial; because these distillers, admitted], had reported the full amount of their distillations according to the law, had accounted for it by wine measure, and veteould not escape from the inexorable fangs of the law and of the liarpies who were engaged in its execution. will advert to another matter of abuse under this law. The collector in that district admitted to me when his name was before the Senate for confirmation on renomination, that some of his officers had assessed, for the simple gauging of the liquor, in some instances, as high as 7%. upon its value, and in other instances as high as 5%. When that is the character of the law, when that is the system of tyranny and oppression, with all of its vexations, that the Government introduces and men are thus wronged and robbed and plundered and impoverished for a violation of its immaterial provisions by the officers who ought to be the guardians of the innocent distillers as well as of the Government, how can it be expected that men thus robbed and plundered should feel a disposition to sustain the system or the Government itself? Mr. President, I want no more war no more rebellion. I never wanted any. I always believed it a great iniquity that would ro ace 8. 100 fold more of mischief an woe to those who made it than it would to anybody else. But if the country should ever unfortu nately come again to a disposition to rebel what more fruitful cause of rebellion and o engendering rebellious feeling could be had than in such a law as this? Sir, the people do not belong to the Government. ey were made for some other purposes than to pay taxes. They have their duties to perform in life, and other ends to attain as individuals and as members of a great political community. The Government by its laws, instead of out raging all the customs and habits of the people in their ordinary business, ought to accommodate itself to the modes of doing that business by the people. Wherever it be practicable to make provisions for taxation an collecting taxes that will observe the habits and modes of the people in doing their business, those habits and modes ought to be scrupulously conformed to and respected by the law. But this law proceeds upon the contra principle, and outrages and isrcgards all those modes of doing t ieir own business by the people, and seeks by its highl penal and punitive revisions to constrain the people to come to its own expensive and most vexations mode of doing their own business. Mr. President, I think that a greater good could not be done to the Government and to the country, and one that would result in producing more of revenue to the Government, and more of contentment and submission to this necessarily vexations measure on the part of the people, than for those who form these bills and give them their features to attempt i n every possible and practicable instance to miti gate tie severity and the vexation of the law and of the system, and to conform the law as nearly as possible to the modes of industry of the people, where that can be done withOut sacrifice of revenue or of public interest.1mg do not think the provision which I have moved to strike out is germane to the bill. I think it is unnecessary; that it is multiplying and making more complexthe law needlessly, without any necessity or any practical result; that it only tends to give one more chance to the harpies who are enriching themselves by having this law executed upon innocent and unsophisticated and ignorant men; and I therefore move to strike it out.