6i2 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tures, the same may be said of any other business or pursuit 

 wliicli employs capital or labor. The merchant, the mechanic, 

 the innkeeper, the banker, the builder, the steamboat owner, are 

 equally promoters of the public good, and equally deserving the 

 aid of the citizens by forced contributions. No line can be drawn 

 in favor of the manufacturer which would not open the public 

 treasury to the importunities of two thirds of the business men 

 of the city or town." * 



Twelve years later a similar case was decided by the same 

 United States Court in the same way. Under the authority of a 

 State law, the city of Parkersburg, Virginia, had issued bonds in 

 aid of a private enterprise. The court decided these bonds to be 

 void for the reasons set forth in Loan Association vs. Topeka. The 

 decision was rested wholly upon the decision in the earlier case, 

 and there was no dissent from it, although one justice (Clifford) 

 had dissented in the Topeka case. Justice Blatchford, in rendering 

 the opinion, said : " Taxation to pay the bonds in question is not 

 taxation for a public object. It is taxation which takes the 



* Here, then, we have from the Supreme Court of the United States a decision, as 

 recent as October, 18'74, defining the limitation of the power of taxation growing out of 

 ''the essential nature of a free government" ; and if under such natural limitation there is 

 no power, as the court decided, in a State government (irrespective of anything to the con- 

 trary in the Constitution of such State) to levy taxes for the support or encouragement of 

 manufacturers, it is difficult to see under what rule or authority the Federal Government 

 can levy taxes like those now imposed, which, from the circumstance that they yield year 

 after year little or no revenue to the national Treasury, are manifestly levied and main- 

 tained for other than public purposes. 



Whether, if a case involving the validity of tariff taxes like those above specified could 

 be brought before the United States Supreme Court, it would apply the same rule of prin- 

 ciple to the Federal that it has to a State government, in respect to the limitation of the 

 sphere of taxation, may be regarded as an open question. An opportunity for avoiding a 

 decision on this subject might be found in the assumption that there was no evidence 

 before the court that any particular tariff act was passed by Congress for any other than 

 revenue purposes, and that the court could not take cognizance of a subsequent change in 

 circumstances growing out of changes in the conditions of prices and supply and demand. 

 And in this connection it is curious to note that in the first tariff enactments of the Federal 

 Congress, which embodied the principle of protection, the preambles of the act openly 

 stated and recognized the objects aimed at, viz., " the support of the Government, and the 

 encouragement and protection of manufactures" ; while in later years the latter clause, 

 relative to manufactures, has been shrewdly omitted from the tariff act preambles 

 possibly from a suspicion that there was a constitutional question covered up in this 

 matter of protective duties which some day would not be found able to stand judicial 

 examination. 



But until the contrary is proved, the opinions and judgment of the Supreme Court of 

 the United States, as given in the Topeka case, would seem to admit of no other construc- 

 tion than that taxation for any other purpose than revenue, or taxation for protection, or in 

 aid of private interests engaged in manufacturing, is beyond the province of the legislative 

 power of either our national or State governments, and when imposed to use the exact 

 language of the court " Is none the less robbery because it is done under the forms of law 

 and is called taxation." 



