The present Congress has already done much beyond any other Congress in our history. Measures, which for long years seemed attainable only to the most sanguine hope, have triumphed. Emancipation in the National Capital; freedom in all the National Territories; the offer of ransom to help emancipation in the States; the recognition of Hayti and Liberia; the treaty with Great Britain for the suppression of the slave-trade; the prohibition of the return of fugitive slaves by military officers; homesteads for actual settlers on the public lands; a Pacific railroad; endowments of agricultural colleges out of the public lands: such are some of the achievements by which the present Congress is already historic. There have been victories of war, won on hard-fought fields, but none comparable to the victories of peace. Besides these measures of unmixed beneficence, the present Congress has created an immense army and a considerable navy, and has provided the means for all our gigantic expenditures by a tax, which in itself is an epoch. Thus, in the prosecution of the war, Congress has exercised two great powers,--first, to raise armies, and, secondly, to tax. Both bear directly upon loyal fellow-citizens everywhere throughout the country. Sons, brothers, and husbands are taken from happy homes and from the concerns of business, leaving vacant places, never, perhaps, to be filled again, and hurried away to wage a fearful war. But beyond this unequalled draft upon the loyal men of the country, summoning them to the hazards of battle, there is another unequalled draft upon the loyal property of the country, presenting a combined draft without precedent upon men and upon property. If you would find a parallel to the armies raised, you must go back to the forces marshalled under Napoleon in the indulgence of unbridled ambition. If you would find a parallel to the tax, you must go further back, to that early day of which the Gospel, in its simple narrative, speaks: “And it came to pass in those days that there went out a decree from Cæsar Augustus, that _all the world_ should be taxed.” A similar decree is about to go out from you,--not, indeed, to tax all the world, but to tax a large and generous people: vast, it may be, even for the world. There have been taxes here before; and in other countries there have been taxes as enormous: but there has been no such tax here before; and in no other country has any such tax been levied at once, without the preparation and education of long-continued taxation. * * * * *