292 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of their capacities for happiness security : nothing less, "but 

 nothing more/' Sharswood, Legal Ethics. 



" To the extent that the mass of our citizens are inordinately 

 burdened beyond any useful public purpose and for the benefit of 

 a favored few, the Government, under pretext of an exercise of 

 its taxing power, enters gratuitously into partnership with these 

 favorites, to their advantage and to the misery of a vast majority 

 of our people." Message of Grover Cleveland, President of the 

 United States, December, 1888. 



Taxation for Revenue only. "What does it mean ? It 

 is essential to the completeness of this discussion to call attention 

 at this point to the circumstance that a full recognition and rigid 

 adherence in practice by a Government to the principles of taxa- 

 tion above shown to be fundamental, will not interfere with or 

 impair the efficiency of its administration. The raising of reve- 

 nue (money) by taxation is one thing; the determination of how 

 the revenue collected shall be used or expended is quite another 

 thing ; and the danger line to the liberties of the people is crossed 

 when these two functions are confounded. The exercise of the 

 first, as already pointed out, is subject to limitations growing out 

 of the conditions essential to the existence of a free Government. 

 The determination of the second rests primarily in the legislative 

 department of such Government, and is subject to no legal limita- 

 tions in the United States other than what flows from the oft-re- 

 peated dicta and decisions of its highest judicial authorities, that 

 money taken out of the pockets of the people by taxation can not 

 be used (expended) for any other than a public purpose ; but 

 what constitutes a public purpose is so indefinite that one emi- 

 nent jurist, especially versed in the subject, has declared that 

 "there is no such thing as drawing a clear line of distinction 

 between purposes of a public and those of a private nature." * 



If a state, therefore, in the plenitude of the wisdom of its legis- 

 lators, desires to interfere with the operation of the laws of trade, 

 domestic or foreign, control the preferences of its citizens in 

 respect to production or consumption, repress one form of indus- 

 try and stimulate another, and discourage even to prohibition the 

 indulgence of such tastes and passions as it may judge to be det- 

 rimental to itself or the individual, it may legitimately exercise 

 functions entirely different from that exercised in raising revenue 

 and governed by entirely different principles. The right to regu- 

 late trade and commerce and the power of police are entirely 

 independent of the right to raise revenue. 



If the state, in providing itself with what it regards as neces- 

 sary revenue, levies its taxes in such a manner that no citizen is 



* Cooley, Law of Taxation, p. 70. 



