NO TAX ON BOOKS,

REMARKS IN THE Senate, on AMENDMENT OF THE INTERNAL REVENUE BILL, June 2 and 6, 1864.

HE Senator from New York [Mr. MORGAN] has pro

TH

posed the exemption of a class of hospitals. I am in favor of his proposition. It is not now, however, under discussion. In similar spirit I move to strike out, on the one hundred and thirty-fifth page, lines two hundred and twelve, two hundred and thirteen, and two hundred and fourteen, as follows:

"On all printed books, magazines, pamphlets, reviews, and all other similar printed publications, except newspapers, a duty of five per cent ad valorem."

I make one remark on this tax. We do not tax wheat or corn, because they are the staff of life. In my judgment, a tax on books is less defensible than a tax on wheat or on corn. I believe books are the staff of life; and I believe that our country would do itself honor, if at this moment, when imposing a heavy tax upon all things, it deliberately exempted books. The tax proposed is applicable to all books,-books for family reading, for the library, and also for the school. All that we can get from the tax will be very small indeed. It will not add sensibly to the Treasury, but it will impose a burden upon knowledge. I hope, therefore, that the Senate will strike the words out.

The motion was rejected.

At the next stage of the bill Mr. Sumner renewed his motion to strike out the tax on books, and then said:

MR. PRESIDENT,- I am sorry to occupy the attention of the Senate, even for a moment, especially at this late stage of a protracted debate. But I feel that the question which I have presented is not adequately appreciated. I venture to say, that, in point of principle, few questions of equal importance have arisen on this bill.

The tax on books is peculiar, and, so far as I know, without precedent in other countries. In England paper has been taxed, but books not; here paper is to be taxed, and books too. For instance, there is to be a tax of three per cent on paper, and then five per cent additional on books, making a sum-total of eight per cent on books.

The tax of three per cent on paper seems contrary to sound policy. But the additional tax of five per cent on books is more indefensible still. I have already likened it to a tax on wheat or flour or bread, which you do not think of imposing. More than either of these is a book "the staff of life." It may be likened also to a tax on the light of day, like the English window-tax, which you do not think of imposing. Better shut out the light of day than the light of books.

The book in some cases may be a luxury, but in most cases it is a necessary, while always the handmaid of civilization. It is for all ages and all conditions,-for young and old, for rich and poor, for the family circle as well as the library,-but it is especially for the school. In all these places you will enter and demand eight per cent on every book. Every book, if it had a voice, would repel the demand.

Why not be instructed by the example of England,

when taxing everything taxable? Read the extensive list of articles taxed at the period of most searching and wide-spread taxation, and you do not find books. Read that marvellous enumeration made by the genius of Sydney Smith, and you do not find books.

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poor

"Taxes upon every article which enters into the mouth, or covers the back, or is placed under the foot; taxes upon everything which it is pleasant to see, hear, feel, smell, or taste; taxes upon warmth, light, and locomotion; taxes on everything on earth and the waters under the earth, on everything that comes from abroad or is grown at home; taxes on the raw material; taxes on every fresh value that is added to it by the industry of man; taxes on the sauce which pampers man's appetite, and the drug that restores him to health, on the ermine which decorates the judge, and the rope which hangs the criminal,on the man's salt, and the rich man's spice, on the brass nails of the coffin, and the ribbons of the bride, at bed or board, couchant or levant, we must pay. The school-boy whips his taxed top; the beardless youth manages his taxed horse with a taxed bridle on a taxed road; and the dying Englishman, pouring his medicine which has paid seven per cent into a spoon that has paid fifteen per cent, flings himself back upon his chintz bed which has paid twenty-two per cent, and expires in the arms of an apothecary who has paid a license of a hundred pounds for the privilege of putting him to death. His whole property is then immediately taxed from two to ten per cent. Besides the probate, large fees are demanded for burying him in the chancel; his virtues are handed down to posterity on taxed marble; and he is then gathered to his fathers, to be taxed no more." 1

A passage so exquisite in wit and language is sea

1 America; Review of Seybert's Statistical Annals: Edinburgh Review, January, 1820: Works (London, 1840), Vol. I. p. 372.

sonable here, especially when considering what shall be taxed; but I ask you to bear in mind that the English tax-gatherer never laid his hand on a book. Everything else he might touch, a book never.

And yet in our country it is proposed to tax books. This is the land of public schools, where you boast that education, like justice, is free to all at the common cost. But a tax on books is in direct conflict with this beautiful principle. Every argument for free schools pleads also for free books, at least for freedom from taxation. It will be a curious inconsistency to rear the school-house, often costly, where every child is welcomed without charge, and then compel him to pay a tax of eight per cent on every book he carries in his satchel.

There is one term which fitly characterizes this tax. It is a term adopted abroad, but more justly applicable to a tax on books than to any other tax: I mean a tax on knowledge. Such is the tax now proposed. And this tax, which cannot be named without awakening just condemnation, you are asked to make an American institution. After long struggle in England, the various taxes on knowledge are abandoned. I hope that our country, representative and defender of liberal ideas, will not commence a system which modern civilization has disowned.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

The motion was lost, Yeas 8, Nays 19.

CREATION OF THE FREEDMEN'S BUREAU:

A BRIDGE FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM.

SPEECHES IN THE SENATE, ON BILLS AND CONFERENCE REPORTS CREATING A BUREAU OF FREEDMEN, JUNE 8, 14, 15, 1864, AND February 13, 21, 22, 1865.

MARCH 1, 1864, after debate on different days in February, the House of Representatives adopted a bill to establish a Bureau of Freedmen's Affairs.

March 2d, in the Senate, this bill was referred to the Committee on Slavery and Freedmen, of which Mr. Sumner was Chairman.

May 25th, Mr. Sumner reported the bill to the Senate with a substitute. The intermediate period was occupied by the Committee in a careful and laborious consideration of the whole subject, involving the question of power proper for the Bureau, whether it should be placed in the War Department or in the Treasury Department, which already had the care of abandoned lands. No less than nine different projects were laid before the Committee, some by eminent citizens interested in the freedmen, among whom were Hon. Robert Dale Owen, of Indiana, Hon. John Jay, of New York, and Edward L. Pierce, of Massachusetts. The House bill was not satisfactory. Mr. Owen said, in a letter dated March 8th, "In my judgment the bill of the House will not work."

The bill reported by Mr. Sumner was drafted by him, and adopted by the Committee. It was in ten sections, and began with these words: "That an office is hereby created in the Treasury Department, to be called the Bureau of Freedmen, meaning thereby such persons as have become free since the beginning of the present war."

June 8th, the Senate proceeded to consider the bill, when Mr. Sumner explained and vindicated it.