The tax on books is peculiar, and, so far as I know, without precedent in other countries.
Charles Sumner
The Public Record
Charles Sumner was an American lawyer and statesman who represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1851 until his death in 1874. Before and during the American Civil War, he was a leading American advocate for the abolition of slavery, and after the war he was a key figure in the Reconstruction era, during which he and other Radical Republicans successfully fought to end slavery and ensure basic rights for Black Americans. He continued advocating for racial equality until his death, lobbying in his final days for a civil rights bill that served as a model for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Historians credit Sumner with coining the phrase "equality before the law," which he first used as part of an early attempt to integrate Boston's public school system.
gutenberg.org
In England paper has been taxed, but books not; here paper is to be taxed, and books too.
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.
Why not be instructed by the example of England, when taxing everything taxable?
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.
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.
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.
As they derive their freedom from the United States, under legislative or executive acts, the National Government cannot be excused from making such provisions as may be required for their immediate protection and welfare during the…
The freedom conferred must be rendered useful, or at least saved from being a burden.
In some places it is a question of life and death.
It is urgent everywhere; and in some places it is the voice of distress.
Wherever our arms have prevailed, the old social system has been destroyed.
Masters have fled, and slaves have assumed a new character.
Wherever in the department they have been well treated and reasonably compensated, they have invariably rendered faithful service to their employers.
Politicians like Charles Sumner
