Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 5.djvu/353

337 THE SUGAR BOUNTIES. 337 claim, can only spend or raise taxes for a public purpose, the court may reasonably be called upon to pass upon the public nature of the purpose in this case. It at once follows from the attorney-general's position in its unqualified form that there is practically no limitation whatever upon the constitutional power of Congress to raise and appropriate taxes. Clearly the limitation, if any, is that claimed by the importers. The power is either unlimited or it is limited by the requirement that the taxation must be for a public purpose. What other can there be ? Certainly, there is no more constitutional authority for paying men to tap a maple and boil its sap, or to raise cane, than there is to raise hay, potatoes, corn, or cabbage. If the taxes constituting the funds in the national treasury can be collected and disbursed to compensate a man for making sugar, they can be for making brick or any other manufacture. There can be, in such case, no limit to the extent to which monies raised by taxation can be appropriated to the individual benefit of preferred citizens, and in the encouragement of their private enterprises, and to their personal gains. 1 This case is largely one of first impression, but we are not left without landmarks. It is certain that the attorney-general's con- tention, in this broad form, is not in accordance with recognized authority. The power to tax " for the general welfare " is not un- limited. Judge Story (1 Story, Const., § 990) asks and answers this precise question. Have Congress a right to raise and appropriate the public money to any and to every purpose according to their will and pleasure ? They certainly have not. In the Topeka case (20 Wall., p. 663, top) Mr. Justice Miller, it will be noted, declares, as to this taxing power, that The theory of our governments, State and National, is opposed to the deposit of unlimited power anywhere. In his lectures, the same jurist has amplified the idea that the federal power of taxation, instead of being free from limitations imposed upon State taxation, is really much more circumscribed than that of the States : The general government can levy taxes, but they must be for a defined purpose, such as the payment of the public debt, or of the army 1 Brief of Messrs. Stanley, Clarke, & Smith, p. 51. See also Turner v. Nye, Mass. S. J. C, 28 N. E. Rep. 1048, 1050.