Here is another tax on knowledge. On the face it is a tax on rags; but rags are imported to make paper; so that a tax on rags is a tax on paper, and as such is a tax on knowledge. CONSTITUTIONAL QUORUM OF THE SENATE. SPEECH IN THE SENATE, ON A RESOLUTION DECLARING THE CONSTITUTIONAL QUORUM, JULY 12, 1862. According to long-continued usage, a quorum of the Senate was a majority of the whole number of Senators, assuming each State represented by two Senators. After the withdrawal of the Rebel Senators, business was often embarrassed from the failure of what was supposed to be the constitutional quorum. To remove this difficulty, Mr. Sherman, April 11th, introduced the following:-- “_Resolved_, That a majority of the Senators duly elected and entitled to seats in this body is a constitutional quorum.” July 12th, Mr. Sumner said:-- MR. PRESIDENT,--What is a quorum depends upon the Constitution; but we approach its consideration with the knowledge that in England, the original home of our institutions, and especially of Parliamentary Law, the question, for a long period anterior to the National Constitution, was fixed by usage. Indeed, usage is authority for the larger part of the English Constitution. But in this case of a quorum the usage is liable to alteration. In his elaborate work on the Law and Practice of Legislative Assemblies, the Parliamentary Law on the subject is thus stated by Mr. Cushing:-- “In the British Parliament, according to the ancient and invariable usage of the two Houses, as evidenced by their rules, three is the number necessary to constitute a quorum of the Lords, and forty a quorum of the Commons. These numbers, respectively, although established by and dependent upon usage merely, and within the power of each House to abrogate or change at any time, have, nevertheless, the force of standing orders; that is, they are equally binding upon every succeeding Parliament until abrogated, and do not require to be specially adopted in order to be in force.”[97] It will be observed that the quorum of the Commons, numbering six hundred and fifty-four persons, is only forty, and this number appears to have been recognized as long ago as 5th January, 1640. At an earlier day more than sixty was required, and as late as March 18, 1801, an attempt was made in the Commons to revive this ancient rule, but it failed. For a short time in 1833 and 1834 the quorum for private business was twenty.[98]