Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol II).djvu/475

 CH. XIV.] in which those clauses are expressed, import this intention. In thus reticulating its exercise, a rule is given in the second section of the first article for its application to the respective states. That rule declares, how direct taxes upon the states shall be imposed. They shall be apportioned upon the several states according to their numbers. If, then, a direct tax be laid at all, it must be laid on every state, conformably to the rule provided in the constitution. Congress has clearly no power to exempt any state from its due share of the burthen. But this regulation is expressly confined to the states, and creates no necessity for extending the tax to the district or the territories. The words of the ninth section do not in terms require, that the system of direct taxation, when resorted to, shall be extended to the territories, as the words of the second section require, that it shall be extended to all the states. They, therefore, may, without violence, be understood to give a rule, when the territories shall be taxed, without imposing the necessity of taxing them. It could scarcely escape the members of the convention, that the expense of executing the law in a territory might exceed the amount of the tax. But be this as it may, the doubt created by the words of the ninth section relates to the obligation to apportion a direct tax on the territories, as well as the states, rather than to the power to do so.

§ 1006. If, then, the language of the constitution be construed to comprehend the territories and District of Columbia, as well as the states, that language confers on congress the power of taxing the district and territories, as well as the states. If the general language of the constitution should be confined to the states, still the sixteenth paragraph of the eighth section gives to