Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/480

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HE nature and scope of the "legal" and wholly anomalous definition (to which reference has been made, see page 173) that has been given in the United States by its Supreme Court to a direct tax, and the interesting judicial and historical circumstances in connection therewith are substantially as follows:

The Constitution of the United States provides that "representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers"—that is, population—"and excluding Indians not taxed." The origin of the idea thus incorporated in the Constitution of proportioning direct taxes according to representation, or population, rather than upon property, is not certainly known, and has been made the subject of speculation. Hamilton, subsequent to the adoption of the Constitution, suggested that the writings of the French economists of the eighteenth century, with which a number of the prominent members of the Constitutional Convention were familiar, was its source. These held that "agriculture was the only productive employment, and that the net product from land, to be found in the hands of the landowner, is the only fund from which taxation can draw without impoverishing society." They were accordingly led to class taxes habitually as direct when laid immediately upon the landowner, and as indirect when laid upon somebody else, but in their opinion destined to be borne by the landowner ultimately. Precedents for levying taxes by apportionment were also to be found in the French taille réelle, which was a tax on the income of real property and laid by apportioning a fixed sum among the provinces and requiring from each its quota. The English land tax, established under William III, embodied a like provision.