The important thing is to get our tariff legislation out of the slough of guesswork and logrolling and ex parte statements of interested persons, and to establish that legislation on the basis of tested and determined facts.
Message to the House of Representatives Returning Without Approval an Act Reducing the Duties on Cotton Manufactures,...
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Certainly we should proceed prudently in dealing with them upon the basis of ascertained facts rather than hastily and without knowledge to make a reduction of the tariff to satisfy a popular desire.
No honest, clear-headed man, however great a lover of popular government, can deny that the unbridled expression of the majority of a community converted hastily into law or action would sometimes make a government tyrannical and cruel.
The danger is not so much that the class of users in whose favor the classification purports to be made will receive more benefit than the framers of the law may have intended, but it is that many who do not belong to the class intended to…
This would impose a heavy burden on the administrative branch of the Government, create disastrous uncertainty in commercial circles, and lead to a burdensome amount of litigation.
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