If this result should follow the
passage of the bill, a tax for the exclusive benefit of a single class
would be imposed upon the consumers of copper throughout the entire
country, not warranted by any need of the Government, and the avails of
which would not in any degree find their way into the Treasury of the
nation. If the miners of Lake Superior are in a condition of want, it
can not be justly affirmed that the Government should extend charity to
them in preference to those of its citizens who in other portions of the
country suffer in like manner from destitution. Least of all should the
endeavor to aid them be based upon a method so uncertain and indirect as
that contemplated by the bill, and which, moreover, proposes to continue
the exercise of its benefaction through an indefinite period of years.
It is, besides, reasonable to hope that positive suffering from want,
if it really exists, will prove but temporary in a region where
agricultural labor is so much in demand and so well compensated.
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