I am sure, eminent as the Senator is, and justly representing his own State, that he does not represent on this question every citizen of that State. I have in my hand a letter, received since this amendment was first mentioned, from a most respectable citizen of Cincinnati, and with your permission I will read three or four sentences from it. I read simply to show how this proposition strikes citizens at a distance, yet having the same interest in it that we have.
“Permit a stranger to address a few words to you, expressive of approbation of your bill”—
He calls it a bill, when it is only an amendment.
—“providing for a revision of the Enrolment Act, so as to afford a sliding scale of commutation for the draft, the object being to rate commutation according to the means of the drafted individual. I quote from telegrams of this morning’s news. In my humble opinion you have hit the nail on the head. I think this is the only method to equalize the burden, and satisfy all claims for justice and equitable dealing. When any fixed sum is indicated as the commutation fee to exempt from actual military duty, it needs but little reflection to see that it indirectly imposes a premium upon property while it taxes the poor.”
Then he goes on to suppose a case, somewhat at length, quite elaborately indeed, between two citizens of Cincinnati, neighbors, whom he minutely describes, and finally winds up that part of his communication by saying,—
“Suppose the latter person [whom he calls John Smith] is drafted. Why, three hundred dollars is no more to him than a three-penny loaf to the other person. Am I not right, that a fixed sum for exemption imposes a tax upon honest poverty and a premium upon wealth?”
This intelligent constituent of the Senator objects to his whole theory as a tax upon honest poverty and a premium upon wealth. The Senator opposes my amendment as a tax upon wealth. Call it, if you please, a tax upon wealth. The time has come when it should be levied. But I put aside such language. I put aside the idea, except in the general sense, that the draft itself is a tax, and the amendment simply aims to equalize that tax.
The amendment was lost,—Yeas 15, Nays 25.
January 15th, Mr. Sumner moved his amendment as an additional section. Again it was lost,—Yeas 16, Nays 28.