Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/494

476 by which the Federal Government performs its functions, it would seem clearly to follow that for like reasons the Federal Government can not tax State instrumentalities or agencies.

That such reciprocal limitations are natural and necessary, and exist by implication, not only in the Constitution of the United States, but also in the very structure of the Federal Union, must be evident, when one reflects that otherwise the Federal Government on the one hand, and the governments of the States on the other, might impose taxation to an extent that would cripple, if not wholly defeat, the operations of the two authorities, each within its respective and proper sphere of action. Or, in other words, if the Federal and the State governments had each unrestricted power to tax, or, what is equivalent, "the power to destroy," they might, and as experience proves they probably would, effectually destroy efficient government in both cases, and the necessity and validity of such reciprocal limitations have been recognized and enforced by the courts of the United States whenever this question has been brought before them for adjudication. Thus, in the case of Day vs. Buffington, United States Circuit Court, Massachusetts District, it was held that the salary of a State official, in this particular instance a judge of probate, could not be legally subjected to assessment for an income tax, under the laws of the United States authorizing the assessment and collection of internal revenue; and Congress, some years since, acting under the advice of the United States Supreme Court, repealed so much of an internal revenue act as previously required the affixing of stamps to State processes, warrants, commissions, etc. In the case of Warren vs. Paul, 22 Ind., 279, the court used the following language: "The Federal Government may tax the Governor of a State or the clerk of a State court and his transactions as an individual, but not as a State officer. This must be so, or the State may be annihilated at the pleasure of the Federal Government. The Federal Government may, perhaps, take by taxation most of the property in a State if exigencies require, but it has not a right by direct or indirect means to annihilate the functions of the State government."

In a recent debate in the United States Senate on a proposition to appropriate public money for the purpose of establishing and maintaining higher institutions of learning in the District of Columbia than were offered by its common schools, a leading Senator (John Sherman), others concurring, is reported as expressing himself as follows:

"I concur entirely in the opinion expressed by the Senator from Rhode Island (Mr. Aldrich) that we have no right to use the public money to establish business high schools. It is the duty of every community to give the children who are growing up a