PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 155 



called personal property in existence that is, there were no 

 credit or paper representatives of property, but everything in the 

 nature of property existed in the form of land, slaves, houses, 

 animals, agricultural products, tools, or furniture. 



The record of the assemblage (convention) that drafted the 

 Constitution, which by adoption by the parties (States) thereto 

 called the United States into existence as a nation, on this subject 

 of guarding and limiting the taxing power on the part of the 

 prospective State or Government which they proposed to create, 

 is comparatively full and complete. The Revolution, which in- 

 volved the renouncing of all allegiance of the British- American 

 colonies to the mother country, had its origin in unjust taxation ; 

 and in the Declaration of Independence this fact was made con- 

 spicuous among the reasons that were relied on by the colonies to 

 justify their action in the opinion of mankind. The attempt in 

 1778 to establish a General Government by the union of all the 

 colonies under certain conditions, known as Articles of Confedera- 

 tion, was found after a few years of experience to be wholly lack- 

 ing in all the elements of strength and stability, through the lack 

 of any proper adjustment of the power of taxation ; thereby en- 

 tailing an almost complete inefficiency of sovereignty. Thus, 

 there was no power in the Congress of the Confederation to raise 

 money by taxation ; but the Confederation depended for revenue 

 upon requisitions on the several States, with which the States 

 might comply or not, as they chose, and with which they gener- 

 ally did choose not to comply, either promptly or fully, if at all. 

 Some of the States levied duties on the imports of merchandise 

 at the expense of their neighbors ; and adjacent ports in different 

 States competed with each other by arbitrarily varying the rates 

 on imports, as the Congress of the Confederation had no authority 

 to regulate commerce, or legislate on this subject for the whole 

 country.* The result was, as Mr. Madison expressed it, that 

 " the Federal authority had ceased to be respected abroad, while 

 at home it had lost all confidence and credit." It was to remedy 

 this one radical infirmity, more than any other, that the present 

 Constitution was projected and formed. Other great improve- 

 ments in the Articles of Confederation were contemplated and 

 made in the Constitution when it was formed, but the most 

 important of all was in the regulation of taxation. Hamilton, 

 who drafted the address to the States inviting them to send dele- 



* The author of The Federalist (No. '7) refers to the situation of New York, as com- 

 pared with that of Connecticut and New Jersey, as affording an example of the opportuni- 

 ties which some States had under the Confederation of rendering others tributary by a 

 monopoly of the taxes on imports, and said that New York would neither be willing nor able 

 to forego the advantage of levying duties on importations, a large part of which must be 

 necessarily paid by the individuals of the other two States in their capacity of consumers. 



