Mr. SUMNER. Mr. President, there is no question of the exemption of those who are best able to pay these duties; it is simply a question of a tax on knowledge. The Senator by his system would shut these out from the country and would say, “Hail to darkness!” Let me say, “Hail, holy light!” I do not wish to repeat what I have so often said in this Chamber; but the argument of the Senator has been made here again and again, and hereto for as often as it has been made invenier. taken to answer it. He says we H.a tax on necessaries now on the food that fills the body; on the garments that clothe the body. We well; we do. I regret that we do. I wish that we were in a condition to relieve the country of that taxation. But does not the Senator bear in mind that he now proposes to go further, and, in going further, to depart from the great principle which governs our institutions from the beginning of our history? We have had education free; in other words, we have undertaken to fill the mind and to clothe the mind at the public expense. We never did undertake to fill the body or to clothe the body at the public expense. I, sir, as a lover of my race should have been glad could the country have clothed the body and filled the body with food at the public expense. I should have been glad of it i. society been in such a condition that that visionary idea could be accomplished; but we all know that it is not. Let us then be prac tical and stand on the ancient ways; seek the principle which governed our fathers, which enters essentially into republican institution and that principle I say is; that education an knowledge, so far as practicable, shall be free. In order to make education and knowledge free you must so far as possible relieve all your books of taxation. I have already in what I said a moment ago said that I did not propose to interfere with any of the practical interests of the book trade; and where those interests are out of the way I insist that the great principle of republican institutions should be applied. This is my answer to the Senfrom Oregon. I do not think that he has adequately considered this question. He has not brought to it that knowledge, that judgment which always commands my respect as often as he addresses the Chamber. He seems to me to have spoken hastily. I hope that on the present occasion he will withdraw or at least relax his opposition and think of the subject hereafter, and range himself, as he must, I know, with his large intelligence event ually, on the side of human knowledge.