Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/316

300 used in respect to the fiscal functions of a government, as expressive simply of different methods of effecting one and the same object—namely, the compelling of contributions from persons, property, or business for the use or support of the state. The contention, then, thus far is simply a quibble as to the meaning of words. Third, the authority given to Congress by the Constitution "to lay and collect ‘imposts,’ in connection with taxes, duties, and excises," does not warrant the assumption that any of these acts of levying and collection are to be by methods that are not primarily for the purpose of raising revenue (money) for the service of the state, or are antagonistic to the structure of a free government. Following the precedents before noted, a measure known as the Anti-option Bill has been introduced and found favor in Congress, which is nothing more nor less than an attempt to make people dealing in certain staple agricultural commodities honest by the exercise of the taxing power; a measure devised for effecting indirectly that which it would be unconstitutional to do directly—namely, to prevent trading in cotton, grain, hops, meats, etc., for future delivery, by first assuming that all such sales are "immoral, unnatural, unjust, and injurious," and then attempting to put an end to them, not by the exercise of the police power of the several States, but by licensing and taxing them by the Federal Government under pretense of collecting revenue, when by the very terms of the bill no taxes productive of revenue are likely to accrue from its provisions. It is difficult to see why, if this extraordinary measure is made law and obligatory on all citizens, the policy of restraint involved should not be made also applicable to the buying and selling of all articles other than cotton and cereals—as cloth, stoves, boots and shoes, securities—and even personal service; and why, if it is right to extinguish one trade or calling by taxing it, every other may not be uprooted and extinguished in the same way.