300 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



used in respect to the fiscal functions of a government, as expres- 

 sive simply of different methods of effecting one and the same 

 object namely, the compelling of contributions from persons, 

 property, or business for the use or support of the state. The con- 

 tention, then, thus far is simply a quibble as to the meaning of 

 words. Third, the authority given to Congress by the Constitution 

 " to lay and collect * imposts,' in connection with taxes, duties, and 

 excises," does not warrant the assumption that any of these acts 

 of levying and collection are to be by methods that are not 

 primarily for the purpose of raising revenue (money) for the 

 service of the state, or are antagonistic to the structure of a free 

 government. Following the precedents before noted, a meas- 

 ure known as the' Anti-option Bill has been introduced and 

 found favor in Congress, which is nothing more nor less than 

 an attempt to make people dealing in certain staple agricul- 

 tural commodities honest by the exercise of the taxing power ; 

 a measure devised for effecting indirectly that which it would be 

 unconstitutional to do directly namely, to prevent trading in 

 cotton, grain, hops, meats, etc., for future delivery, by first assum- 

 ing that all such sales are " immoral, unnatural, unjust, and iu ju- 

 rious," and then attempting to put an end to them, not by the 

 exercise of the police power of the several States, but by licensing 

 and taxing them by the Federal Government under pretense of 

 collecting revenue, when by the very terms of the bill no taxes 

 productive of revenue are likely to accrue from its provisions. 

 It is difficult to see why, if this extraordinary measure is made 

 law and obligatory on all citizens, the policy of restraint involved 

 should not be made also applicable to the buying and selling of 

 all articles other than cotton and cereals as cloth, stoves, boots 

 and shoes, securities and even personal service ; and why, if it is 

 right to extinguish one trade or calling hy taxing it, every other 

 may not be uprooted and extinguished in the same way.* 



* As pertinent and most instructive on this subject attention is asked to the following 

 extract from a speech of Hon. Edward D. White (then a Senator of the United States from 

 Louisiana, and now a judge of the United States Supreme Court), in the course of a debate 

 in the Senate in July, 1892, on the so-called Anti-option Bill: "No power as to imposts 

 was reserved in the States by the Federal Constitution. All the lawful powers of govern- 

 ment which could be exercised in that particular passed into the life and being of the 

 Federal Government by the lodgment in that Government of the power to levy imposts. In 

 my judgment, if complaint is made of impost taxes by the Federal Government, levied not 

 for the purpose of revenue, but for protection or prohibition, the complaint is not that the 

 Federal Government violates the Constitution or the limitations of the Constitution, be- 

 cause as to that all authority is granted by the Constitution. When I say this I mean no 

 limitation by the Constitution by express provision of the Constitution. The complaint of 

 undue or prohibitory external imposts is not that the Constitution has been violated. 



" No, but that there has been a violation of the great fundamental and elementary prin- 

 ciple of all government, which underlies all constitutions, which affect this Government and 



