CHAPTER XLVI. SALT; THE UNIVERSALITY OF ITS SUPPLY; MYSTERY AND INDISPENSABILITY OF ITS USE; TYRANNY AND IMPIETY OF ITS TAXATION; SPEECH OF MR. BENTON: EXTRACTS.
It is probable that salt is the most abundant substance of our globe—that it is more abundant than earth itself. Like other necessaries of life—like air, and water, and food—it is universally diffused, and inexhaustibly supplied. It is found in all climates, and in a great variety of forms. The waters hold it in solution; the earth contains it in solid masses. Every sea contains it. It is found in all the boundless oceans which surround and penetrate the earth, and through all their fathomless depths. Many inland seas, lakes, ponds, and pools are impregnated with it. Streams of saline water, in innumerable places, emerging from the bowels of the earth, approach its surface, and either issue from it in perennial springs, or are easily reached by wells. In the depths of the earth itself it is found in solid masses of interminable extent. Thus inexhaustibly abundant, and universally diffused, the wisdom and goodness of Providence is further manifested in the cheapness and facility of the preparation of this necessary of life, for the use of man. In all the warm latitudes, and especially between the tropics, nature herself performs the work. The beams of the sun evaporate the sea water in all the low and shallow reservoirs, where it is driven by the winds, or admitted by the art of man; and this evaporation leaves behind a deposit of pure salt, ready for use, and costing very little more than the labor of gathering it up. In the interior, and in the colder latitudes, artificial heat is substituted for the beams of the sun: the simplest process of boiling is resorted to; and where fuel is abundant, and especially coal, the preparation of this prime necessary is still cheap and easy; and from six to ten cents the real bushel may be considered as the ordinary cost of production. Such is the bountiful and cheap supply of this article, which a beneficent Providence has provided for us. The Supreme Ruler of the Universe has done every thing to supply his creatures with it. Man, the fleeting shadow of an instant, invested with his little brief authority, has done much to deprive them of it. In all ages of the world, and in all countries, salt has been a subject, at different periods, of heavy taxation, and sometimes of individual or of government monopoly; and precisely, because being an article that no man could do without, the government was sure of its tax, and the monopolizer of his price. Almost all nations, in some period of their history, have suffered the separate or double infliction of a tax, and a monopoly on its salt; and, at some period, all have freed themselves, from one or both. At present, there remain but two countries which suffer both evils, our America, and the British East Indies. All others have got rid of the monopoly; many have got rid of the tax. Among others, the very country from which we copied it, and the one above all others least able to do without the product of the tax. England, though loaded with debt, and taxed in every thing, is now free from the salt tax. Since 1822, it has been totally suppressed; and this necessary of life is now as free there as air and water. She even has a statute to guard its price, and common law to prevent its monopoly.
This act was passed in 1807. The common law of England punishes all monopolizers, forestallers, and regraters. The Parliament, in 1807, took cognizance of a reported combination to raise the price of salt, and examined the manufacturers on oath: and rebuked them.
Mr. B. said that a salt tax was not only politically, but morally wrong: it was a species of impiety. Salt stood alone amidst the productions of nature, without a rival or substitute, and the preserver and purifier of all things. Most nations had regarded it as a mystic and sacred substance. Among the heathen nations of antiquity, and with the Jews, it was used in the religious ceremony of the sacrifices—the head of the victim being sprinkled with salt and water before it was offered. Among the primitive Christians, it was the subject of Divine allusions, and the symbol of purity, of incorruptibility, and of perpetuity. The disciples of Christ were called "the salt of the earth;" and no language, or metaphor, could have been more expressive of their character and mission—pure in themselves, and an antidote to moral, as salt was to material corruption. Among the nations of the East salt always has been, and still is, the symbol of friendship, and the pledge of inviolable fidelity. He that has eaten another's salt, has contracted towards his benefactor a sacred obligation; and cannot betray or injure him thereafter, without drawing upon himself (according to his religious belief) the certain effects of the Divine displeasure. While many nations have religiously regarded this substance, all have abhorred its taxation; and this sentiment, so universal, so profound, so inextinguishable in the human heart, is not to be overlooked by the legislator.
Mr. B. concluded his speech with declaring implacable war against this tax, with all its appurtenant abuses, of monopoly in one quarter of the Union, and of undue advantages in another. He denounced it as a tax upon the entire economy of NATURE and of ART—a tax upon man and upon beast—upon life and upon health—upon comfort and luxury—upon want and superfluity—upon food and upon raiment—on washing, and on cleanliness. He called it a heartless and tyrant tax, as inexorable as it was omnipotent and omnipresent; a tax which no economy could avoid—no poverty could shun—no privation escape—no cunning elude—no force resist—no dexterity avert—no curses repulse—no prayers could deprecate. It was a tax which invaded the entire dominion of human operations, falling with its greatest weight upon the most helpless, and the most meritorious; and depriving the nation of benefits infinitely transcending in value, the amount of its own product. I devote myself, said Mr. B., to the extirpation of this odious tax, and its still more odious progeny—the salt monopoly of the West. I war against them while they exist, and while I remain on this floor. Twelve years have passed away—two years more than the siege of Troy lasted—since I began this contest. Nothing disheartened by so many defeats, in so long a time, I prosecute the war with unabated vigor; and, relying upon the goodness of the cause, firmly calculate upon ultimate and final success.
