907. BOOKS AS CAPITAL.—
Some few
years ago when the tariff was before Congress,
I engaged some of our members of
Congress to endeavor to get the duty repealed,
and wrote on the subject to some
other acquaintances in Congress, and pressingly
to the Secretary of the Treasury. The
effort * * * failed. * * * There is a consideration
going to the injustice of the tax * * *.
Books constitute capital. A library book lasts
as long as a house, for hundreds of years.
It is not, then, an article of mere consumption
but fairly of capital, and often in the case
of professional men, setting out in life, it is
their only capital. Now there is no other
form of capital which is first taxed 18 per
cent. on the gross, and the proprietor then
left to pay the same taces in detail with
others whose capital has paid no tax on the
gross. Nor is there a description of men less
proper to be singled out for extra taxation.—
To James Madison.
Ford ed., x, 194.
(M.
Sep. 1821)
