Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol II).djvu/502

 494 a question of supremacy; and if the right of the states to tax the means employed by the general government be conceded, the declaration, that the constitution, and the laws made in pursuance thereof, shall be the supreme law of the land, is empty and unmeaning declamation.

§ 1040. It has also been insisted, that, as the power of taxation in the general and state governments, is acknowledged to be concurrent, every argument, which would sustain the right of the general government to tax banks, chartered by the states, will equally sustain the right of the states to tax banks, chartered by the general government. But, the two cases are not on the same reason. The people of all the states have created the general government, and have conferred upon it the general power of taxation. The people of all the states, and the states themselves, are represented in congress, and, by their representatives, exercise this power. When they tax the chartered institutions of the states, they tax their constituents; and these taxes must be uniform. But, when a state taxes the operations of the government of the United States, it acts upon institutions created, not by their own constituents, but by people, over whom they claim no control. It acts upon the measures of a government, created by others, as well as themselves, for the benefit of others in common with themselves. The difference is, that, which always exists, and always must exist, between the action of the whole on a part, and the action of a part on the whole; between the laws of a government declared to be supreme, and those of a government, which, when in opposition to those laws, is not supreme. But if the full application of this argument could be admitted, it might bring into question the