Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol II).djvu/422

 414 will be equally difficult to adjust the proper proportions; for the inquiry itself, in respect to the future wants, as well of the states, as of the Union, and their relative proportion, must involve elements, for ever changing, and incapable of any precise ascertainment. Too much, or too little would forever be found to belong to the states; and the states, as well as the Union, might be endangered by the very precautions to guard against abuses of power. Any separation of the subjects of revenue, which could have been fallen upon, would have amounted to a sacrifice of the interests of the Union to the power of the individual states; or of a surrender of important functions by the latter, which would have removed them to a mean provincial servitude, and dependence.

§ 941. Other objections of a specious character were urged against confiding to congress a general power of taxation. Among these, none were insisted on with more frequency, and earnestness, than the incapacity of congress to judge of the proper subjects of taxation, considering the diversified interests, and pursuits of the states, and the impracticability of representing in that body all their interests and pursuits. The principal pressure of this argument has been already examined, in the survey already taken of the