Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol II).djvu/412

 404 already suggested) illimitable in their nature, so it is impossible safely to limit that capacity.

§ 932. In answer to this reasoning it was objected, that it is not true, because the exigencies of the Union may not be susceptible of limitation, that its power of taxation ought to be unconfined. Revenue is as requisite to the purposes of the local administrations, as to those of the Union; and the former are at least of equal importance with the latter to the happiness of the people. It is, therefore, as necessary, that the state governments should be able to command the means of supplying their wants, as that the national government should possess the like faculty in respect to the wants of the Union. But an indefinite powder in the latter might, and probably would in time, deprive the former of the means of providing for their own necessities; and would subject them entirely to the mercy of the national legislature. As the laws of the Union are to become the supreme law of the land; and as it is to have power to pass all law s, that may be necessary, for carrying into execution the authorities, with which it is proposed to vest the national government, it might at any time abolish the taxes imposed for state objects upon the pretence of an interference with its own. It might allege a necessity of doing this in order to give efficacy to the national revenue; and thus all the resources of taxation might by degrees become the subjects of federal monopoly, to the entire exclusion and destruction of the state governments. The