Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 9.djvu/227

199 POLLOCK V. FARMERS' LOAN AND TRUST COMPANY. 199 of Massachusetts, a stockholder of shares of a value greater than five thousand dollars in the respondent company, which was a cor- poration organized under the laws of the State of New York, and having its usual place of business in the city of New York, and certain sums of its capital invested in real estate and in municipal bonds of the said city, and in other personal property. The bill charged that the respondent was about voluntarily to comply with the provisions of sections 27-37 ^ of ^he Act of Congress of August 27, 1894,^ which it alleged were unconstitutional, null and void,^ and if the respondent did comply with said sections of the said Act of Congress, it would be exposed to a multiplicity of suits ; and the prayer of the bill was that it might be adjudged and decreed that sections 27-37 of the Act of Congress of August 27, 1894, were null and void; and that the respondent might be restrained from voluntarily complying with the provisions therein contained. The respondent demurred to the bill for want of equity. The demurrer was sustained by the Circuit Court, which allowed an appeal directly to the Supreme Court of the United States. Although it is nowhere so stated in the report of the case, the government of the United States was evidently allowed either to intervene or to be heard by the Court as an amicus ciiricB. Upon the first hearing and argument it was adjudged by a majority of the Supreme Court that so far as these sections attempted to lay and collect a tax upon income derived from rents, they were unconstitutional, as laying a "direct tax" within the meaning of the Constitution without apportioning it ; and that also they were unconstitutional so far as they assumed to tax income derived from State and municipal bonds, as being a tax upon the instruments and govenmental functions of State governments, 1 A most satisfactory summary of these sections will be found in 157 U. S. 434, which lack of space forbids reprinting here. 8 "Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective numbers. — United States Constitution, Art. I., sect, 2,clause 3. The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts, and excises shall be uniform throughout the United .'• tates. — Id, sect. 8, clause i. No capitation, or other direct tax shall be laid, unless in proportion to the census or enumeration hereinbefore directed to be taken. — //., sect, ^^clatise 4. No tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any State. — Id., sect. 9, clause 5.
 * 28 Stat. 509, 553.