Mr. Findlay observed, that in addition to the constitutional objections urged, he had others on the ground of expediency. The country colleges and seminaries whose funds were small, had seldom or never an opportunity of importing books; they were happy to receive them in the country as donations, or by cheap editions; they would therefore receive no corresponding accommodation, and yet they were more useful and their use more universally felt than those called higher institutions, which claim to be exempted from paying impost. There are only a few of the well-endowed academies that can afford to procure foreign books, and when they have them, their circulation is extremely confined; to say nothing more, these reasons would engage me to support the resolution.
Mr. R. Griswold.—The gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Randolph) must have misunderstood me when he supposed I objected to the report because the committee had assigned no reason for the resolution: I mentioned the circumstance merely to show that we ought not then to decide. With respect to the constitutional objection he has set up, I acknowledge it is new to me. Such an inquiry may be of great weight, but it does not appear so to me. The paragraph quoted from the eighth section of the first article, “that Congress shall have power to levy and collect taxes,” has never struck me in the way it has that gentleman. The words are, “levy and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises;” but it drops the word taxes, it being settled in another part of the constitution, and declares that duties, imposts, and excises shall be uniform. The one speaks of direct taxes, the other of indirect—meaning that if an indirect tax is laid, it shall be uniform. No one State is to have an excise laid upon its inhabitants unless it extends to the citizens of every other: one part is not to be excised and another excused. This has always been the construction of that section of the constitution till the present moment, and I think it the true one. It is now said that Congress can only promote science and literature in one way. Why, have not Congress made grants of lands to promote those objects in the Western country? They have. I believe the power of Congress adequate to promote literature in the way applied for; and it has been frequently the case that, even after duties have been paid into the Treasury upon the uniform system, yet individuals have had those duties returned. I do not want to detain the House; but I am well persuaded that the constitution forms no impediment, and the expediency must be apparent.
Mr. J. Clay said he was one of the committee, and had agreed to the report. Since reasons had been called for, he would in a few words assign those which influenced him. The gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Dana) mistakes in thinking that a denial to exempt books from impost is a tax on literary institutions, and therefore not uniform, as the constitution requires all imposts should be; but he did not make his stand on the ground of the constitution—he rested the question upon its expediency. Giving literary institutions the privilege of exemption from imposts would open a wide door for fraud: we should soon have them importing books for sale duty free, rivalling the booksellers, who are subjected to the payment of impost, and vending them in every street and avenue of the nation. But why privilege colleges and universities to accommodate the rich; for we may believe that the rich, and the children of the rich, are the only persons who have access to these collections? The poor have little leisure and less opportunity to improve the advantage which even neighborhood would give them to peruse works of the kind alluded to; and sure it would be thought unjust to tax their pittance of imported articles, in order to enable gentlemen to read the classic authors, or the sublime and beautiful of the modern writers.
Mr. Findlay spoke of colleges, not of universities. We have three in Pennsylvania—one of them, to be sure, has also the title of university—but two of them have not funds to import books on their own account. It is only rich institutions that have this advantage: the poorer class of seminaries buy of booksellers, and pay them the impost as well as their retail profit. Indeed, this remission of duties will rather tend to create disgust than give satisfaction; and those seminaries which have large collections of books would be induced to sell them at their present price in order to procure new ones cheaper, as they have had to pay the duty on the former, but would have none to pay upon those they should hereafter import.
The question being called for, it was put on agreeing to the report of the Committee of the Whole, that it is inexpedient to remit the duty on books, and carried in the affirmative—seventy-nine members voting in the affirmative.
The House then adjourned.
Wednesday, November 28.
Potomac River.
The House resolved itself into a Committee of the Whole on the bill authorizing the corporation of Georgetown to make a dam or causeway from Mason’s Island to the western shore of the river Potomac.
Mr. Macon (Speaker) moved to strike out the first section of the bill, with a view of trying its merits.