medicines and preparations of perfumery,
cosmetics, photographs, matches, cards, and indeed every instrument
or article to which a stamp could be attached. It also provided
for taxes on the succession to real estate, legacies, distributive
shares of personal property, and a tax of from five to ten per
cent. on all incomes above $600, upon all employments, upon all
carriages, yachts, upon slaughtered cattle, swine and sheep, upon
express companies, insurance companies, telegraph companies,
theaters, operas, circuses, museums and lotteries, upon all banks
and bankers, brokers, and upon almost every article of domestic
production. It placed a heavy tax upon licenses, upon dealers in
spirits, upon brokers, lottery-ticket dealers and almost every
employment of life.

It largely increased the tax on spirits, ale, beer, porter, and
tobacco in every form. Not content with this, on the last day of
the session, Congress levied a special income tax of five per cent.,
to provide for the bounties promised to Union soldiers. This
drastic bill occupied the attention of both Houses during a
considerable portion of the session, and became a law only on the
30th of June, 1864, within four days of the close of the session.
It was greatly feared that the law could create discontent, but it
was received with favor by the people, few if any complaints being
made of the heavy burden it imposed. The customs duties were
carefully revised, not in the interest of protection but solely
for revenue. Nearly all the articles formerly on the free list
were made dutiable, and they proved to be copious sources of revenue,
especially the duties on tea, coffee, spirits of all kinds, wines,
cigars, and tobacco in every form.

During that session Congress passed two important loan bills, which
practically confided to the Secretary of the Treasury the power to
borrow money in almost any form that could be devised. The first
act, approved March 3, 1864, authorized him to borrow, on the credit
of the United States, $200,000,000 during the current fiscal year,
redeemable after any period not less than five years, and payable
at any period not more than forty years from date, in coin, and
bearing interest at six per cent. per annum. It also provided for
the issue of $11,000,000 5-20 bonds which had been sold in excess
of the $500,000,000 authorized by law. By the act approved June
30, 1864, the Secretary of the Treasury was authorized to borrow,
on