Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/409

Rh man ever has done. As long as this great feature is preserved intact and the nation adds to it another principle, that every question of doubt concerning it shall be always determined in a way to strengthen it, the perpetuity of the present Government is assured. But if now the Supreme Court invalidates this great feature by nullifying the mandate of the Constitution, and thereby practically removes all limitations on the powder of Congress to impose taxes, sanctions discriminating taxation and disregards the rights of minorities, the hour when this Government enters upon the path of decadence will have struck. How puerile it is for any one to favor such a decision and its inevitable results, on the ground that a contrary decision would oblige the Government to repay to the people a large sum of money that it had illegally collected from them! This would, however, have one recommendation—namely, that it would approximately solve the difficult question. How much, in terms of money, is the existing Government worth?

—The following extract, incorporated by Mr. Justice Field in his opinion, delivered in concurrence with a majority of his colleagues, and adverse to the constitutionality of the income-tax statute of 1884, which imposed discriminating taxes on the American people, is also pre-eminently worthy of notice in connection with any general history or review of this great subject:

"Here I close. I could not say less in view of questions of such gravity that go down to the very foundation of the Government. H the provisions of the Constitution can be set aside by an act of Congress, where is the course of usurpation to end? The present assault upon capital is but the beginning. It will be but the stepping-stone to others, larger and more sweeping, till our political contests will become a war of the poor against the rich—a war constantly growing in intensity and bitterness. 'If the court sanctions the power of discriminating taxation, and nullifies the uniformity mandate of the Constitution, 'as said by one who has been all his life a student of our institutions,' it will mark the hour when the sure decadence of our present Government will commence.' If the purely arbitrary limitation of four thousand dollars in the present law can be sustained, none having less than that amount of property being assessed or taxed for the support of the Government, the limitation of future Congresses may be fixed at a much larger sum, at five or ten or twenty thousand dollars, parties possessing that amount alone being bound to bear the burdens of government; or the limitation may be designated at such an amount as a board of walking delegates may deem necessary. There is no safety in allowing the limitation to be adjusted except in strict compliance with the mandates of the Constitution which require its taxation to be uniform in operation and, so far as