PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 619 



authorized by Congress, without any challenge before the proper 

 courts of their constitutionality ? The answer is to be found in 

 the legal fact that "the question of the constitutionality of a 

 law can never be presented and determined abstractly. It must 

 always be raised by somebody whose person or property is 

 affected by the execution of the statute the validity of which he 

 impugns.* Until the opportunity for raising and the individual 

 who can raise the question of constitutionality present them- 

 selves, there can be no presumption from the existence of such 

 legislation upon the statutebook." 



Iq Maine, a law which for more than half a century almost 

 as long as the State has existed had been enforced, and repro- 

 duced in each revision of the statutes, was declared unconstitu- 

 tional so soon as challenged ; the chief justice meeting the reason 

 for such acquiescence by saying that " the judicial opinion and 

 the public sense were not so much awakened to the principle un- 

 derlying this then as now." (Brief of Smith and Clarke, averring 

 the unconstitutionality of the tariff act of 1800.) * 



The nature, definition, and limitations of the service for public 

 purposes, which a free representative government can render or 

 perform by the expenditure of moneys raised by taxation having 

 been once ascertained and enunciated by the supreme judicial 

 authority of the State (as would seem to have been done in the 

 United States), the instant, thereafter, that taxation essays to be- 

 come anything but taxation i. e,, for an unquestionable public 

 purpose ; the instant that it is made an instrumentality for effect- 

 ing any results other than such as are directly necessary or bene- 

 ficial to the whole public, that instant it becomes inequitable and 

 antagonistic to the very idea of a just government ; and the citi- 

 zen whose person or property is thereby affected has at least a 

 moral right to demand protection and redress. 



\^To be continued.^ 



According to Mr. Meredith Nugent, in Our Animal Friends, elephants 

 like fun. Two little elephants at Bridgeport, he says, take evident pleasvu^e 

 in the tasks that are set them. Even in the stable, when no trainer was 

 about, one of them " would stand on its head just as it was used to do in 

 the circus, and the other would look anxiously on until its own turn came 

 to stand on its head and be admired by its companion." 



* " It is by facts and instances that the people are taught their Constitutions and their 

 laws. Constitutions are framed ; laws established ; institutions built up ; the processes of 

 society go on, until at length, by some opposing, some competing, some contending forces 

 of the State, an individual is brought into the point of collision, and the clouds surcharged 

 with the great force of the public welfare burst over his head.'' Speech of Mr. Evartsfor 

 the Defense, tn the Impeachment of Preident Johnson, 



