PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 615 



ment, and would tend to correct and enlighten the morals of the 

 citizens." (First Municipality vs. New Orleans Theater Com- 

 pany, 2 Rob., Louisiana, 209.) 



The Bounty Case op 1891. A review of this department of 

 the application of taxation would be incomplete that failed to 

 notice a legal contention before the Supreme Court of the United 

 States in 1891, respecting the constitutionality of the tariff act of 

 1890, which was questioned on several grounds ; one of them be- 

 ing a provision requiring the payment of bounties to every pro- 

 ducer of sugar of certain saccharine strength * from beet, sorghum, 

 sugar cane, or maple sap, grown or produced within the United 

 States. Under this provision of the tariff enactment of 1890, the 

 citizen of Connecticut was taxed for the benefit of the farmer of 

 Nebraska or California, and the farmer of New York for the ben- 

 efit of the Louisiana planter ; the farmer who raised wheat and 

 corn at ten or twelve dollars an acre was taxed for the benefit of 

 a farmer in a distant State who raised sugar cane or sugar beets 

 at fifty or a hundred dollars an acre. There was, moreover, but 

 little doubt that the inclusion of sugar, made from maple sap, in the 

 bounty provision, was not originally contemplated by the origi- 

 nators and promoters of the act ; inasmuch as the manufacture of 

 such sugar is one of the most profitable industries of the coun- 

 try, and as a rule readily calls for a fancy or artificial price ; but 

 was included in the act, while under consideration by Congress, 

 for the reason that its enactment into law would otherwise have 

 been difficult or impossible. Another interesting and anomalous 

 feature of this case was that it originated in an attempt to ob- 

 tain the bounty after the enactment (law) offering it was repealed, 

 on the ground that the claimants planted cane in expectation 

 of the continuance of the bounty, and would suffer loss if they 

 did not get it. The question of the validity of the entire tariff 

 act, by reason of the unconstitutionality of the bounty provision 

 contained in it, having been raised, the attorney general of the 

 United States antagonized such assumption before the court as 

 follows : 



First, that under the clause of the Federal Constitution (sec- 

 tion 8 of Article I) which empowers Congress to levy taxes, duties, 

 etc., " to pay the debts and provide for the general welfare " of 

 the United States, Congress has the power to expend taxes for 

 anything which, in its judgment, is "for the general welfare." 

 Second, that the judicial decisions of the State courts, to the effect 

 that taxation, to be lawful, must be for public purposes, have no 

 application to this controversy, inasmuch as they were all of them 



* Two cents per pound on sugar testing not less than 90" by the polariscope, and one 

 and three fourths cents per pound on sugar testing less than 90, but not less than 80. 



