PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 291 



prejudices of legislators, who may not be tlie same in any two 

 successive legislative assemblies. 



Such a perversion of principle, furthermore, reaches its cli- 

 max of absurdity in practice when its immediate beneficiaries 

 claim to be the only proper persons by whom the incidence and 

 amount of taxation can be intelligently determined a claim that 

 is practically equivalent to the assumption that privilege should 

 take precedence of rights in the theory of government.* And 

 yet there have been but very few of the revenue enactments in re- 

 cent years of the Federal Government of the United States that 

 have not only indorsed the rightfulness and desirability of such 

 claims, but have made them the basis of most important legis- 

 lation. 



As this subject has hitherto received but little attention from 

 legislators and the legal profession in the United States, the fol- 

 lowing citations from recognized American authorities are most 

 pertinent in this connection : 



" A burden laid not for the purpose of producing revenue, but 

 in order to accomplish some ulterior object which the General 

 Government lacks the power otherwise to accomplish, comes 

 under no definition of the word " tax " which is recognized in 

 public law. It demands no contributions for the service of the 

 state ; it adds and is expected to add nothing to the public reve- 

 nue. It annihilates that upon which it is levied, and it differs 

 from confiscation only in this : that confiscation seizes something 

 of value and appropriates it to the needs of the Government, thus 

 making it useful, while this seizes it for the purpose of destruc- 

 tion." Cooley, Law of Taxation, p. 75. 



" One grievous invasion of property and of course ultimately 

 of labor, from whose accumulations all property grows is by 

 Government itself, in the shape of taxation for objects not neces- 

 sary for the common defense and general welfare. Men have a 

 right not only to be well governed, but to be cheaply governed 

 as cheaply as is consistent with the due maintenance of that 

 security for which society was formed and government instituted. 

 This, the sole legitimate end and object of law, is never to be lost 

 sight of security to men in the free enjoyment and development 



* In popular discussions of tariff revisions in the United States such a claim has r ctu- 

 ally been advanced by the representatives of interests in whose behalf certain imposts had 

 been specially enacted, and which were not for purposes of collecting but rather for the 

 prevention of revenue. 



" It is not claimed that this statute [McKinley Tariff Act], any more than any other hu- 

 man ordinance, was perfect in its details, nor thp,t all its rates of assessment of duties should 

 have been maintained, but the modifications suggested by time and experience should have 

 been left to the friends of the measure." Letter of the Hon. L. P. Morton, acccplivg nomi- 

 nation for the office of Governor of New York, October 9, 1S94- 



