MR. MORRILL expressed his views upon what he is pleased, for MORRILL is
mirthful in his heavy way, to designate the reduction of taxes. He said
that we had been for some time in a state of peace, and our expenses
were not so large as they had been. Therefore he thought we might leave
direct taxation alone. To be sure he was not prepared to suggest any
specific reductions in direct taxation. But, doubtless, they would be
made some day or other. In the meantime let us pile on the tariff. This
was his notion of reducing taxation. Let the importers and the consumers
who don't like it--
Learn how sublime a thing it is
To suffer and be strong.
Then the Senate betook itself to considering an appropriation for
educating the colored infant. Mr. WILSON strongly approved it, not only
on account of the colored infant, for whose education he did not in a
general way feel any particular solicitude, inasmuch as the less
educated he was, the likelier he would be to give his voice and vote to
him, (Mr. WILSON,) and his like; but also because the appropriation
would provide for a number of the supernumerary female school-teachers
of Massachusetts, who had become a great trial to him, and particularly
to his colleague, Mr. SUMNER.
Mr. SUMNER said "that's school," and explained that he believed he was
venerated by the women of Massachusetts, but that their reverence for
him was too great to allow them to approach him with importunities.
Nevertheless, he was in favor of the bill, as tending to break down the
accursed spirit of caste, and to disseminate throughout the South the
three or more R's which he had so often had the honor of reverberating
throughout the Senate.
Mr. YATES approved of the bill. It was his general principle to vote for
any thing that looked to the disbursement of money. He was particularly
in favor of this measure, because he wanted an uniform education for
every body. He didn't want any body else to know more than himself, and
he didn't want to know more than any body else. (Voices--You don't.)
Take spelling. There was only one correct method of spelling--the one
that he pursued. And yet he had never found any other person who agreed
with him in it. Evidently, this was not right. He demanded that the
children of the country should be taught to spell on proper principles,
so that his works might be intelligible to posterity, as they were not
to his contemporaries.
Of course Mr. SUMNER seized the occasion to quote crowds of authorities
on education, which debilitated the Senate to a dissolution.