476 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



talities by which the Federal Government performs its functions, 

 it would seem clearly to follow that for like reasons the Federal 

 Government can not tax State instrumentalities or agencies. 



That such reciprocal limitations are natural and necessary, and 

 exist by implication, not only in the Constitution of the United 

 States, but also in the very structure of the Federal Union, must 

 be evident, when one reflects that otherwise the Federal Govern- 

 ment on the one hand, and the governments of the States on the 

 other, might impose taxation to an extent that would cripple, if 

 not wholly defeat, the operations of the two authorities, each 

 within its respective and proper sphere of action. Or, in other 

 words, if the Federal and the State governments had each unre- 

 stricted power to tax, or, what is equivalent, " the power to de- 

 stroy,'^ they might, and as experience proves they probably would, 

 effectually destroy efficient government in both cases, and the ne- 

 cessity and validity of such reciprocal limitations have been recog- 

 nized and enforced by the courts of the United States whenever this 

 question has been brought before them for adjudication. Thus, in 

 the case of Day vs. Buffington, United States Circuit Court, Mas- 

 sachusetts District, it was held that the salary of a State official, 

 in this particular instance a judge of probate, could not be legally 

 subjected to assessment for an income tax, under the laws of the 

 United States authorizing the assessment and collection of inter- 

 nal revenue ; and Congress, some years since, acting under the 

 advice of the United States Supreme Court, repealed so much of 

 an internal revenue act as previously required the affixing of 

 stamps to State processes, warrants, commissions, etc. In the case 

 of Warren vs. Paul, 22 Ind., 279, the court used the following lan- 

 guage: "The Federal Government may tax the Governor of a 

 State or the clerk of a State court and his transactions as an indi- 

 vidual, but not as a State officer. This must be so, or the State 

 may be annihilated at the pleasure of the Federal Government. 

 The Federal Government may, perhaps, take by taxation most of 

 the property in a State if exigencies require, but it has not a right 

 by direct or indirect means to annihilate the functions of the 

 State government." 



In a recent debate in the United States Senate on a proposition 

 to appropriate public money for the purpose of establishing and 

 maintaining higher institutions of learning in the District of 

 Columbia than were offered by its common schools, a leading 

 Senator (John Sherman), others concurring, is reported as ex- 

 pressing himself as follows : 



" I concur entirely in the opinion expressed by the Senator 

 from Rhode Island (Mr. Aldrich) that we have no right to use the 

 public money to establish business high schools. It is the duty 

 of every community to give the children who are growing up a 



