“The bill does not amend or modify any part of the internal-revenue taxes applicable to spirits or fermented liquors. It abolishes all the special taxes and licenses, so called, imposed upon the manufacture of tobacco, cigars and snuff, and dealers thereof, reduces the tax upon manufactured tobacco from eight to four cents per pound, and removes all restrictions now imposed upon the growers of tobacco. With these exceptions, the internal-revenue laws are left undisturbed. From this source we reduce taxation over $70,000,000, and leave with the people this direct tax which has been paid by them upon their own products through a long series of years. “The tariff part of the bill contemplates and proposes a complete revision. It not only changes the rates of duty, but modifies the general provisions of the law relating to the collection of duties. These modifications have received the approval of the Treasury Department, and are set forth in detail in the report of the committee, and I will not weary you by restating them. “We propose this advanced duty to protect our manufacturers and consumers against the British monopoly, in the belief that it will defend our capital and labor in the production of tin plate until they shall establish an industry which the English shall recognize has come to stay, and then competition will insure regular and reasonable prices to consumers. It may add a little, temporarily, to the cost of tin plate to the consumer, but will eventuate in steadier and more satisfactory prices. At the present prices for foreign tin plate, the proposed duty would not add any thing to the cost of the heavier grades of tin to the consumer. If the entire duty was added to the cost of the can, it would not advance it more than one-third, or one-half of one cent, for on a dozen fruit cans the addition would properly only be about three cents. “We have now enjoyed twenty-nine years continuously of protective tariff laws—the longest uninterrupted period in which that policy has prevailed since the formation of the Federal government—and we find ourselves at the end of that period in a condition of independence and prosperity the like of which has never been witnessed at any other period in the history of our country, and the like of which had no parallel in the recorded history of the world. In all that goes to make a nation great and strong and independent, we have made extraordinary strides. In arts, in science, in literature, in manufactures, in invention, in scientific principles applied to manufacture and agriculture, in wealth and credit and National honor we are at the very front, abreast with the best, and behind none.