Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/636

616 cases of municipal taxation, which must be for public municipal purposes; and that it is obvious that the establishment of a particular industry in one place, by a bonus to specified private individuals, is a very different object for taxation than the encouragement by the national Government of a widespread industry in many quarters of the Union for national purposes, with a view of diversifying the industries of the country and making it independent of other countries for its necessities." (Speech of United States Attorney-General Miller.) Third, that the assumption that "public purposes" in respect to taxation by Congress means something different than the same phrase when applied to State taxation is sustained by instances in which Congress has authorized the expenditure of public moneys for bounties or relief to people in this and other countries; some forty cases of this character being cited, in which relief in the form of money or supplies was given to sufferers by fire, grasshoppers, overflow of the Mississippi, yellow fever, earthquakes (one in Venezuela, South America), and for defraying the expense of transporting food to Ireland, France, and Germany. To these instances may perhaps be added the "codfish bounty," which was practically a drawback upon the duty on imported salt used for preserving fish.

In rejoinder it was contended: First, that if Congress has power to expend taxes for anything which in its judgment is "for the general welfare," then there is practically no limitation whatever upon its constitutional power to raise and appropriate taxes; and that its power to treat the public purse as its own, and give away the proceeds of taxation is as unlimited as is the cupidity of congressional lobbyists. It was also ingeniously pointed out that the position of the attorney general was equivalent to saying that when a tax is levied by a State for a given purpose it is not for public use, but when levied by the national Government for the same or a like purpose it is for public use. Again, such an assumption of unlimited power on the part of Congress directly antagonizes the opinions of Chief-Justice Marshall (see page 149, vol. L, Popular Science Monthly) and also the declaration, made in special reference to the taxing power by the United States Supreme Court through Mr. Justice Miller in the Topeka case (page 153, ditto), "That the theory of our governments, State and national, is opposed to the deposit of unlimited power anywhere." Justice Story (on the Constitution, section 990) also asks and answers the precise question at issue: "Has Congress a right to raise and appropriate the public money to any and to every purpose according to their will and pleasure? They certainly have not." The same jurist, in his lectures on the Constitution, thus further amplified his ideas on this subject, and evidently thought that he had in the following brief paragraphs