296 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



for suppressing fraud. If absolute prohibition is tbe object, then 

 sucb. result should be attained through the police force of the 

 state, and through its legislative enactments making the act, 

 powers, or products which it is desired to suppress, misdemeanors 

 or felonies. The manufacture and sale of spirituous liquors, in 

 common with all other branches of business, is a legitimate sub- 

 ject for taxation, but there is a broad distinction indeed, nothing 

 in common between taxing this business for revenue and in 

 levying taxes with a view of preventing the business from being 

 transacted at all, and so preventing revenue. 



Again, if the above analysis of the origin, justification, and 

 limitations of the power of taxation is correct, it would seem evi- 

 dent that to seek to make the occasion for the exercise of the 

 power other than necessity, and the object anything else than the 

 raising of money for meeting the expenditures of a government 

 economically administered, is to strike a blow at not only good 

 government, but also at free government. It is also a flat denial 

 of the authoritative statement of the United States Supreme 

 Court that "there are rights in every free government beyond 

 the control of the state," and that the theory of our Government, 

 State and national, admits of no place for the deposit of unlim- 

 ited power. For the deliberate recognition and indorsement of 

 the right on the part of the state to disregard these limitations in 

 a single instance, is equivalent to a denial that there are any such, 

 and certainly in this one department makes the Government 

 despotic rather than free. Once recognize the principle of in- 

 equitable taxation, and no one can foresee how far it may be 

 carried. 



If it is contended, as it is, that the use of the power of taxation 

 for purposes other than the collection of revenue finds justifica- 

 tion in the fact that " the law-maker must look far enough be- 

 yond the general purpose to satisfy himself how any proposed 

 levy is likely to affect the general good," a sufficient answer to 

 such contention would seem to be that the general good is always 

 best subserved by doing what is exactly right, and not what is 

 expedient. 



There is no question that the Federal Government of the 

 United States, under its peculiar organization, is excluded from 

 all responsibility for the internal order or morality of the States 

 that make up the Union, and under such circumstances it follows 

 that where Congress assumes that the consumption or use of cer- 

 tain commodities is prejudicial to the interests of the people (as 

 it has done, as will hereafter be shown), and attempts, when pro- 

 viding means for the support of the Federal administration, to 

 embody such assumptions, with a view of prohibitions or re- 

 straints, in measures of revenue, it is also enacting sumptuary 



