Mr. COWAN. Before the Senate proceeds with the unfinished business ofyesterday I de sire to ask for the pass ye of a JtResolution which is now upon the table. Yesterday a JtResolution was received from the HoRep and laid upon your desk, sir, to take off the internalrevenue from crude petro leum. It was not referred to the ComFinance regularly and formally, but the matter was before that committee this morning, and was fully considered. I ask now that the JtResolution be referred to the committee, and that I have leave to reportat once that the committee have considered itfavorably and recommend its immediate passage; and I ask that it be put on its passage, as think the matter is of great importance to the production of the oil regions, particularly of my State. At the time when this tax was imposed, etro leum was worth ten or 11 or 12 dollars a barrel. At that time it was hoped that it would retain these prices in competition with the production of foreign oils, but that hope has not been realized. 1 mm a variety of causes the price has been reduced from ten to about 3 dollars, and when the producer pays the tax, and pays, as in a great many instances he has to do, a great expense for machinery, where the well is not a flowing well but pumpin and falling, itleaves him nothing, and the welIs are being abandoned and the whole region is in a condition of desolation and panic. They are liable to such accidents as very often destroy the proceeds of months in a single night by fire; and those fires are sometimes the work of incendiaries, rowing out, it issaid, of changes which have taken place in carrying on the business, throwing many persons out of employment. For instance, it is alleged that a very great amount of oil has been consumed recently by carters, draymen; wagoners, and others. who were thrown out of employment by the introduction of pipes to carry the oil to the de positories, some of those pipes being 7 or 8 miles long. The exiration of Youngs patent in England and cotland for procurin the petroleum from Scotch shales has reduced prices there, and it is utterly impossible for our people now to compete with those oils, they bearing the burden of this tax. We must consider further that the imposition of a tax upon this commodity is itself against all principle. It goes into the families in every part of the land; it is an article of prime necessity, an article as necessary as air and food to life; and I believe some political economists always, or at least since the days of Adam Smith, have recommended that articles of that character be freed from the imposition of burdens of this kind unless in case of absolute necessity; and upon that principle the producers think they are entitled to the indulgence of congress for this commodity. If it is refused, the revenues will not be the gainer and the people through those TGVIODS will be very largely the losers. may remark another thing, Mr. President, that just at this season of the year is the time when new wells are put down, and in the condition in which the business is now found nobody will embark in it; there is a stagnation all throu by that region of previous activity which is distressing indeed to look upon; and without new wells, and without the investment of the capital necessary to put them down, the production of oil ceases to be a matter of an moment to anybody; because there is no welI, no matter how good a one it may have been at the outstart, how freely it flowed or how profusely it. could be pnm.ed out, that is not time exhausted; and hence to procure the commodit new wells have to be continually sunk and ollowed up by the investment of very considerable amounts of capital. This is now stopped entirely, owing principally to the imposition of a tax of one dollar a barrel upon oil. I hope, then, the Senate will concur with the HoRep in relieving from this burden.