Whereas the traffic in laborers transported from China and other Eastern countries, known as the Coolie trade, is odious to the people of the United States as inhuman and immoral; And whereas it is abhorrent to the spirit of modern international law and policy, which have substantially extirpated the African slave-trade, to permit the establishment in its place of a mode of enslaving men different from the former in little else than the employment of fraud instead of force to make its victims captive: Therefore _Be it resolved_, That it is the duty of this Government to give effect to the moral sentiment of the Nation through all its agencies, for the purpose of preventing the further introduction of coolies into this hemisphere or the adjacent islands. The resolution was adopted. CHEAP BOOKS AND PUBLIC LIBRARIES. REMARKS IN THE SENATE, ON AMENDMENTS TO THE TARIFF BILL REDUCING THE TARIFF ON BOOKS, JANUARY 24, 1867. The Senate having under consideration the bill to provide increased revenue from imports, Mr. Edmunds, of Vermont, moved to retain the following articles on the free list:-- “Books, maps, charts, and other printed matter, specially imported in good faith for any public library or society, incorporated or established for philosophical, literary, or religious purposes, or for the encouragement of the fine arts.” Mr. Sumner said:-- MR. PRESIDENT,--By the existing law, public libraries and literary societies receive books, maps, charts, and engravings free of duty. It is now proposed to change the law, so that public libraries and literary societies shall no longer receive books, maps, charts, and engravings free of duty. It is a little curious that the present moment is seized for this important change, which I must call retrogressive in character. It seems like going back to the Dark Ages. We made no such change during the war. We went through all its terrible trials and the consequent taxation without any such attempt. Now that peace has come, and we are considering how to mitigate taxation, it is proposed to add this new tax. MR. HENDRICKS. Will the Senator allow me to ask whether he regards this bill as a mitigation of the taxes upon goods brought from foreign countries? MR. SUMNER. I am not discussing the bill as a general measure. MR. HENDRICKS. I thought the Senator spoke of the present effort to mitigate taxation. MR. SUMNER. I believe I am not wrong, when I say there is everywhere a disposition to reduce taxation, whether on foreign or domestic articles. Such is the desire of the country and the irresistible tendency of things. But what must be the astonishment, when it appears, that, instead of reducing a tax on knowledge, you augment it!