Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 5.djvu/337

321 THE SUGAR BOUNTIES. 321 tendency in recent legislation. The decision of its legality will naturally check or vastly increase its force and velocity. Apparently the first two grounds of the importers' protest, however well founded in fact or law, are, to a certain extent, of a transient or accidental nature. Not so the question of the con- stitutionality of sugar bounties, first provided for in this bill. The sections of the Act of October, 1, 1890, relating to this subject read substantially as follows : That on and after July first, eighteen hundred and ninety-one, and until July first, nineteen hundred and five, there shall be paid, from any moneys in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, under the pro- visions of section three thousand six hundred and eighty- nine of the Revised Statutes, to the producer of sugar testing not less than ninety degrees by the polariscope, from beets, sorghum, or sugar-cane grown within the United States, or from maple sap produced within the United States, a bounty of two cents per pound; and upon such sugar testing less than ninety degrees by the polariscope, and not less than eighty degrees, a bounty of one and three-fourths cents per pound, under such rules and regulations as the Commissioner of Internal Rev- enue, with the approval of the Secretary of the Treasury, shall prescribe. 1 And for the payment of these bounties the Secretary of the Treasury is authorized to draw warrants on the Treasurer of the United States for such sums as shall be necessary, which sums shall be certified to him by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, by whom the bounties shall be disbursed, and no bounty shall be allowed or paid to any person licensed as aforesaid in any one year upon any quantity of sugar less than five hundred pounds. 2 Certain things may be noted on the surface of these sections. First. The subject-matter is taxation. As the able government brief (by Attorney-General W. H. H. Miller and Solicitor-General William H. Taft) puts it (p. 65) : It may be conceded that the bounty must be paid out of the Treas- ury of the United States from funds raised by taxation and therefore that, unless Congress has power to levy a tax for the • purpose of paying the bounty, an appropriation for a bounty is beyond its power. Second. Individuals are the sole direct recipients of the tax- ation. The money goes from the taxpayer, through the Treas- ury, directly to the sugar-raiser, to increase his profits. The government's attorneys say : The sugar-bounty clause was for the purpose of encouraging the production of raw sugar in this country (p. 59). It will be noted also 1 Schedule E, 231. 3 Schedule E, 235.