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CHARLESTON

At the Carolina Coffee House on March 15, the printers, booksellers, bookbinders, and stationers of Charleston considered "the propriety of addressing congress on the additional duty proposed to be laid on Printing Types."[34] On the following evening, they adopted this memorial,[35] read in the House of Representatives on March 30, 1802:

South Carolina.

To the Honorable the Speaker & members of the House of Representatives of the United States of America:

The Memorial of the Subscribers, printers, booksellers, & Stationers, in the City of Charleston,

Respectfully sheweth,

That it is with concern your memorialists learn, that your honorable body have it in contemplation to lay an additional duty on Printing Types, imported into the United States; which, when laid, will be equal to 20 p cent on the Cost; and that this will be done under the idea of giving encouragement to the manufacturers of Types in the United States.—Your Memorialists beg leave to assure your honorable body, that if they thought this Idea was well founded, & they could believe that the different fonts of Types used in their Business, could be obtained in the United States, it would give them great satisfaction to find encouragement, in the way proposed, given to the manufactures of their country; but knowing that at this time, there are not founderies amongst us that can furnish the twentieth part of the existing demand, they can


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view the intended additional duty in no other light than an act that will distress your memorialists, and all others concerned in the business of Printing, Bookselling, &c. and not add to the general good of the Country. Your memorialists beg leave also to observe to your honorable body, that while duties on almost every species of merchandise will fall but lightly on individuals, being borne by the great mass of consumers, duties on mechanical Implements, coming out of the pocket of the laborious artisan alone, must tend to check the progress of trade, and damp the incentives to industry.—Therefore they pray that your honorable body will not agree to the proposed additional duty on Types.

And your memorialists, as in duty bound, will pray.

Charleston, March 17, 1802. Benjm F. Timothy, W P Young, Bayfield Waller, John Query, John Crow, John Dacqueny, Thomas Sheppard, David R Williams, Tho. Campbell Cox, Peter Freneau, G. M. Bounetheau, T B. Bowen,

Since the report of the Committee of Commerce and Manufactures had been committed to the Committee of the Whole House, each of the above petitions, when read, was also referred to the Committee of the Whole House. On December 14, 1802, these petitions were referred to the Committee of Commerce and Manufactures. The committee reported back on February 21, 1803, when the House, adopting their report, resolved that

the Secretary of the Treasury be, and he is hereby, directed to prepare and lay before Congress, early in their next session, a plan for the levying new and more specific duties . . . .[36]
And so, in the Tariff Act of March 27, 1804, regulus of antimony was exempted from duty, but there was no mention of any additional duty on imported printing type. Like most of the lobbies which were to come, this one had been successful.