Page:Report of the minority of the Select Committee on Emancipation, relative to the bill to establish a Bureau of Freedmen's Affairs.djvu/1

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 * rowspan=2 |38 1st Session
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 * HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.
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 * rowspan=2 |No. 2.
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To the honorable the House of Representatives:

That a careful examination of the provisions of the bill under consideration has convinced your committee that it not only involves grave and important questions, but likewise a task of great magnitude to overcome the legal and apparently just objections which arise upon a fair scrutiny of its contents. Humanity may be pleaded in favor of the passage of the bill, but great caution will have to be exercised, not only that the plea be well founded, but that no unintentional injustice be perpetrated thereby. Among the many questions that arise, and which should, in the opinion of your committee, be satisfactorily disposed of before the bill is suffered to become a law, are the following:

1st. Has Congress the legal power to establish a bureau for the purposes contemplated in the bill; and are the matters intended to be legislated upon, within the province of and of a character to make them proper subjects for national legislation? 2d. Has Congress the constitutional power to impose a tax upon the citizens of one State to support the indigent freedmen of another State, no matter how humane and charitable the motive prompting the act?

3d. Will the passage of the bill in question produce the effect intended or