Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/163

Rh state, or, as we term it, "to tax," must be unrestricted. "The power to tax is therefore the strongest and most pervading of all the powers of government, reaching directly or indirectly to all classes" (United States Supreme Court; Loan Association vs. Topeka, 20 Wallace, 655).

The power to tax, said Chief-Justice Marshall, in giving the opinion of the United States Supreme Court denying the right of Maryland to tax the Bank of the United States (McCulloch vs. Maryland, 4 Wheaton, pp. 316-431), "involves the power to destroy, and may be legitimately exercised on the objects to which it is applicable to the utmost extent to which the Government may choose to carry it." In the case of Weston vs. the City of Charleston, the same court, by the same eminent authority, also held that "if the right to impose a tax exists, it is a rigid which, in its nature, acknowledges no limits. It may be carried to any extent within the jurisdiction of the State or corporation which imposes it, which the will of such State or corporation may prescribe." And in a more recent case (Loan Association vs. Topeka, 20 Wallace) the court, through the late Justice Miller, again expressed itself to the same effect as follows: "Given a purpose or object for which taxation may be lawfully used, and the extent of its exercise is in its very nature unlimited."

The government of a complete sovereignty can therefore tax all that it can lay hands on to enforce the tax—men, women, and children; all property and business—and the power may be exercised again and again until the subject taxed is exhausted or the privilege can be no longer exercised. This statement finds abundant illustration in history of people absolutely impoverished by taxation, and of individuals who have been sold into slavery because of their inability to pay the taxes that the state or ruling power had assessed upon them. The popular idea is that such examples of the extreme exercise of power on the part of the state to compel contributions have passed into history; but this is not the case. In every purely despotic Government there is no limitation on its exercise except such as arises from the inability of the subject to contribute. The head of the state—shah, czar, or emperor—decides how much shall be exacted and the time and manner of exaction; and not infrequently the amount taken is only a little short of what it is necessary to leave to the producer in order to enable him to maintain a mere animal existence. Thus in Russia the present governmental exaction—under the name of taxes—from the agricultural peasant is understood to amount to about forty-five per cent of his annual product or earnings.

In 1890 the excise taxation of Russia—which is mainly levied upon distilled spirits and other alcoholic drinks, tobacco, sugar,