Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol II).djvu/505

 CH. XIV.] may be carried to any extent within the jurisdiction of the state or corporation, which imposes it, which the will of each state and corporation may prescribe. A power, which is given by the whole American people for their common good; which is to be exercised at the most critical periods for the most important purposes; on the free exercise of which the interests certainly, perhaps the liberty, of the whole may depend; may be burthened, impeded, if not arrested, by any of the organized parts of the confederacy.

§ 1044. In a society, formed like ours, with one supreme government for national purposes, and numerous state governments for other purposes; in many respects independent, and in the uncontrolled exercise of many important powers, occasional interferences ought not to surprise us. The power of taxation is one of the most essential to a state, and one of the most extensive in its operation. The attempt to maintain a rule, which shall limit its exercise, is undoubtedly among the most delicate and difficult duties, which can devolve on those, whose province it is to expound the supreme law of the land in its application to the cases of individuals. This duty has more than once devolved on this Court. In the performance of it we have considered it, as a necessary consequence, from the supremacy of the government of the whole, that its action in the exercise of its legitimate powers should be free and unembarrassed by any conflicting powers in the possession of its parts; that the powers of a state cannot, rightfully, be so exercised, as to impede and obstruct the free course of those measures, which the government of the United States, may rightfully adopt.

§ 1045. This subject was brought before the Court 63