FREE INTERNAL COMMERCE. Few of the present day can recall the stubborn battle made in the Pennsylvania Legislature more than a generation ago to unshackle our internal commerce and enable our great State and its great commercial emporium to compete with the other cities of the East for Western trade and traffic. When the Pennsylvania Railroad Company was incorporated by special charter, the State owned the Columbia Railroad, extending from Philadelphia to Columbia on the Susquehanna River, and the main line of the Canal from thence to Pittsburgh, including the Portage Railroad over the Alleghenies. As the new railroad would parallel the State canal and thus compete for its traffic, a tonnage tax of five mills per mile was imposed on all the traffic of the railroad to compensate for the supposed injury to the trade of the canal. At that day none dreamed of a great trunk line like the present Pennsylvania Railroad system-the largest and best appointed on the continent—and no serious objections were interposed against the illiberal tax on tonnage; but when the new railroad had been completed to Pittsburgh, the tax was found to be prohibitory to Western trade, as it could reach the other Eastern cities by the New York and Baltimore lines, free from tax, and thus at cheaper rates. It soon became apparent that the tax on tonnage must be repealed or the Pennsylvania Railroad must be content to be a local line for traffic created between its terminal points. The tax was first reduced to three mills per mile; later the tax was repealed on coal and lumber because it was prohibitory; again the entire tax was repealed in the bill for the sale of the main line in 1857, but the Supreme Court declared the section repealing it to be unconstitutional because it gave special exemption from taxation to certain property of the corporation. It was not until 1861 that this most unjust and suicidal policy of shackling our internal commerce was abolished, and it was accomplished only after one of the most bitter of all our legislative contests. Mr. McClure's address was entirely extemporaneous, as is obvious from the fact that it is wholly devoted to a reply to one of the ablest of the opposition Senators, who had just closed an impassioned appeal for continued exercise of the unwise policy that was driving the whole commerce of the West away from our State. It was one of the most exciting debates ever had in the Senate. The lobby, the aisles and every vacant space in the Senate were packed with spectators, and it was late in the night session when Mr. Clymer called Mr. McClure out to answer him. A number of set speeches were ready for delivery, but when the debate between Mr. Clymer and Mr. McClure ended, by Mr. McClure's speech herein given, none claimed the floor and the vote was taken, resulting in the passage of the measure by one more than a majority of the body. The vital issue of that day has perished, as our internal commerce was made free by the act referred to; but the reasons so forcibly given by Mr. McClure portray the strange prejudices which then confronted liberal progress in the second State of the Union. INTERNAL COMMERCE SHOULD BE FREE.* MR. SPEAKER :-The Senator from Berks (Mr. Clymer) has certainly achieved a brilliant success in greatly astounding himself; and I risk little in saying that he should be prepared for another sensation when he shall discover how seriously and how strangely he has erred. I do not mean that he has erred in any matters of theory or of judgment or of State policy-for such errors I was fully prepared, and meant to excuse them; but when so learned a Senator as the gentleman from Berks defies stubborn facts and the simplest rules of arithmetic, I scarcely know how, even in charity, to reconcile his remarks with his claims to frankness and intelligence. I believe that he has meant to fight this bill fairly. I do not question the sincerity of his convictions in resisting this measure; but he has manifestly studied the question; his array of tables and calculations, so often appealed to in support of his position, gives evidence that he has exhausted his mathematics to swell the tide of ruin that is to overwhelm us when the bill shall become a law. It is but fair, therefore, on a question so momentous in its results, to hold him to a strict accountability for his startling declarations, and I shall leave to him the task of explaining how he has reared for himself such a frightful monument of blunders. He seems to have resolved upon the sensation style of oratory—a style perhaps well adapted to his clarion voice *Delivered in the Pennsylvania Senate, February 27, 1861. |