Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol II).djvu/434

 426, which were kept by or for any person, for his own use, or to be let out to hire, or for the conveying of passengers, to wit, for every coach the yearly sum of ten dollars, &c. &c.; and made the levy uniform throughout the United States. The constitutionality of the act was contested, in the case before stated, upon the ground, that it was a direct tax, and so ought to be apportioned among the states according to their numbers. After solemn argument, the Supreme Court decided, that it was not a direct tax within the meaning of the constitution. The grounds of this decision, as stated in the various opinions of the judges, were; first, the doubt, whether any taxes were direct in the sense of the constitution, but capitation and land taxes, as has been already suggested; secondly, that in cases of doubt, the rule of apportionment ought not to be favoured, because it was matter of compromise, and in itself radically indefensible and wrong; thirdly, the monstrous inequality and injustice of the carriage tax, if laid by the rule of apportionment, which would show, that no tax of this sort could have been contemplated by the convention, as within the rule of apportionment; fourthly, that the terms of the constitution were satisfied by confining the clause, respecting direct taxes, to capitation and land taxes; fifthly, that, accurately speaking, all taxes on expenses or consumption are indirect taxes, and a tax on carriages is of this kind; and, sixthly, (what is probably of most cogency and force, and of itself decisive,) that no tax could be a direct one in the sense of the constitution, which was not capable of apportionment according to the rule laid down in the constitution. Thus, suppose ten dollars were contemplated as a tax on each coach or post-chaise in the United