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Tariffs have benefit only for the domestic maker of a good or service. It insulates him from foreign competition and as a result the consumer pays a higher price for the goods or service. Tariffs were first imposed on manufactured goods for the protection of domestic producers and to encourage the development of the domestic industry on the backs of the consumers. Like the income tax laws, it is unconstitutional if it is a bill of attainder or law not applicable to everything but singling out specific individuals or groups or product buyers or exempting some from its application.

It was the first tariff law that began the assault on the South by the industrializing north that led to the Civil War.
The debate in the Constitutional Convention over representation centered around the Pinckney proposal whereby a head tax would be rendered to raise the $3,000,000 estimate of the cost of the federal government using as a basis the heads of household of both blacks and whites where the head of household was entitled to a vote under most state constitutions. If this had been accepted by the north, the south would have had more representatives in the Congress than the north. The north could not have this to get agreement the south compromised to count only 3/5 of all other persons (blacks). Alexander Hamilton, with a majority in the first Congress instituted, not a head tax as the south had assumed would be the case, but a tariff which fell more heavily on the south.

The count was to be based on the census to be conducted in 1790. The only people who were counted were those heads of household who were entitled to vote in the state and 3/5 of the heads of slave households. The actual census is not one of population as it is now but legal voters in the state. That is because the franchise has been extended to women, all persons over the age of 18 and in some states, felons in jail.

Maine’s 1820 Constitution defines electors as “Every male citizen of the United States of the age of 21 and upwards, excepting paupers, persons under guardianship, and Indians not taxed, having his residence established in this state for the term of three months next preceding any election, shall be an elector for Governor, Senators, Representatives, in the town or plantation where his residence is so established…” It is obvious that the population of the United States in 1790was more than the 3,637,881 counted because anyone under 21 was not counted, nor were women and paupers, who were defined as those who lived on charity or were extremely poor. A reasonable guess would be nearly 4 times that number.

The next census in 2020 will cost upwards of $2 billion dollars and be less accurate than the last because there is no way on earth to count them accurately other than the method used by the government of Iraq when I lived there in 1964. That was the country stopped functioning except for emergency services for three days while people came to every house and counted heads.