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.