PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 477 



good common- school education, whicli covers a pretty wide range 

 now, according to the general ideas of our people, and there the 

 duty should stop. Money for this purpose should be contributed 

 by private persons. We do our duty when we furnish a fair, 

 common-school education to the children that are growing up 

 among us " i. e., in the District of Columbia " and that is all 

 we ought to contribute." 



Can Congress authorize the States to tax National In- 

 strumentalities ? In the popular discussions which have oc- 

 curred in recent years in reference to the taxing of United States 

 securities, the position has been not infrequently taken that it 

 would have been just and expedient on the part of Congress, at the 

 time of the creation of the present national debt, to have allowed 

 the separate States to tax the evidences of such debt (i. e., the 

 bonds) in the possession of their citizens, subject to a limitation 

 that the same should not be taxed at any different rate than other 

 " moneyed capital.'^ A full consideration of the whole subject will, 

 however, suggest a doubt whether Congress possesses the power 

 to grant any such authorization, inasmuch as to have done so 

 would have been equivalent to authorizing the States to do an 

 act which in itself is unconstitutional a thing which it is self- 

 evident that Congress can not do. Thus " the potver to tax," says 

 Chief-Justice Marshall, in giving the opinion of the Supreme 

 Court denying the right of Maryland to tax the Bank of the 

 United States, " involves the power to destroy " ; and in the case 

 of Weston vs. The City of Charleston, the same court, by the same 

 eminent authority, held further, as before shown, "that if the right 

 to impose a tax exists, it is a right ivhich in its nature acTcnoiul- 

 edges no limits." For Congress, therefore, to have authorized the 

 States to tax " national agencies " would have been equivalent to 

 authorizing the exercise of a right to destroy ; which right, the 

 Supreme Court has held, can not, from its nature, when once 

 existing, be limited. 



Alienation of the Taxing Power. The application of the 

 decision by the United States Supreme Court in the celebrated 

 Dartmouth College case, has resulted in the general acceptance 

 of the legal principle that a charter of incorporation by a State is 

 a contract between the State and the incorporators ; and if such 

 charter contains a clause exempting the incorporators entirely 

 from taxation, or for a definite period, a subsequent Legislature 

 can not repeal the clause of exemption. Within a recent period 

 the interest involved in this question has become so great, and 

 the power of wealthy corporations who claim the benefit of this 

 principle is so extensive, that it is desirable to briefly call atten- 

 tion to views of dissenting legal authorities and dissenting State 

 courts. 



