6i6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



cases of municipal taxation, whicli must be for public municipal 

 purposes ; and that it is obvious that the establishment of a par- 

 ticular industry in one place, by a bonus to specified private indi- 

 viduals, is a very different object for taxation than the encourage- 

 ment by the national Government of a widespread industry in 

 many quarters of the Union for national purposes, with a view of 

 diversifying the industries of the country and making it inde- 

 pendent of other countries for its necessities.'' {Speech of United 

 States Attorney- General Miller.) Third, that the assumption 

 that " public purposes " in respect to taxation by Congress means 

 something different than the same phrase when applied to State 

 taxation is sustained by instances in which Congress has author- 

 ized the expenditure of public moneys for bounties or relief to 

 people in this and other countries ; some forty cases of this char- 

 acter being cited, in which relief in the form of money or supplies 

 was given to sufferers by fire, grasshoppers, overflow of the Mis- 

 sissippi, yellow fever, earthquakes (one in Venezuela, South 

 America), and for defraying the expense of transporting food to 

 Ireland, France, and Germany. To these instances may perhaps 

 be added the "codfish bounty," which was practically a drawback 

 upon the duty on imported salt used for preserving fish. 



In rejoinder it was contended: First, that if Congress has 

 power to expend taxes for anything which in its judgment is 

 " for the general welfare," then there is practically no limitation 

 whatever upon its constitutional power to raise and appropriate 

 taxes ; and that its power to treat the public purse as its own, 

 and give away the proceeds of taxation is as unlimited as is the 

 cupidity of congressional lobbyists. It was also ingeniously 

 pointed out that the position of the attorney general was equiva- 

 lent to saying that when a tax is levied by a State for a given 

 purpose it is not for public use, but when levied by the national 

 Government for the same or a like purpose it is for public use. 

 Again, such an assumption of unlimited power on the part of 

 Congress directly antagonizes the opinions of Chief-Justice Mar- 

 shall (see page 149, vol. L, Popular Science Monthly) and also the 

 declaration, made in special reference to the taxing power by the 

 United States Supreme Court through Mr. Justice Miller in the 

 Topeka case (page 153, ditto), " That the theory of our governments, 

 State and national, is opposed to the deposit of unlimited power 

 anywhere." Justice Story (on the Constitution, section 990) also 

 asks and answers the precise question at issue : " Has Congress 

 a right to raise and appropriate the public money to any and to 

 every purpose according to their will and pleasure ? They cer- 

 tainly have not." The same jurist, in his lectures on the Consti- 

 tution, thus further amplified his ideas on this subject, and evi- 

 dently thought that he had in the following brief paragraphs 



