PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 385 



defended on any sound principles of free constitutional government; 

 and is simply a manifestation of tyrannical power, under whatever 

 form of government it may be enforced. The great republican prin- 

 ciple of equality before the law, and constitutional law itself, alike 

 preclude any exemption of income derived from like property. 



M. Thiers, in his work on the Rights of Property, thus forcibly 

 condemns confiscation under the name or form of a graduated in- 

 come tax : " Proportionality," he says, " is a principle, but progres- 

 sion is a hateful despotism. ... To exact a tenth from one, a fifth 

 from another, and a third from another is pure despotism — it is 

 robbery." 



Finally, the principle involved in this question of discriminating 

 income taxation is one that affects the foundation and continued 

 existence of every free government — namely, the equality of all men 

 before the law. Any exemption whatever, under an income tax, be 

 it small or great, except to the absolutely indigent, is purely arbi- 

 trary; and the principle once allowed may be carried to any extent. 

 Any exemption of any portion of the same class of property or 

 incomes is an act of charity which every patriotic American citizen 

 ought to reject upon principle and with scorn, except under circum- 

 stances of great want and destitution. Equality and manhood, there- 

 fore, demand and require uniformity of burden in whatever is the 

 subject of taxation. 



The Inception or Origin of the Income Tax in the United 

 States. — The subject of taxation in the new Government which it 

 was proposed to establish in place of the colonial system which the 

 Revolution had supplanted, constituted one of the most important 

 and salient points of interest in the convention which framed the 

 Constitution of the United States, and was the cause of much differ- 

 ence of opinion among its members and earnest contention betweeik 

 the States. The great source of weakness of the Confederation was 

 its inability to levy taxes of any kind for the support of its Govern- 

 ment. To raise revenue it was obliged to make requisitions upon 

 the States which were respected or disregarded at their pleasure. 

 Great embarrassments followed the consequent inability to obtain 

 the necessary funds to carry on the Government. One of the princi- 

 pal objects of the proposed new Government was to obviate this 

 defect of the Confederacy by conferring authority upon the new 

 Government by which taxes could be directly laid whenever desired. 

 Great difficulty in accomplishing this object was found to exist. The 

 seaboard States were unwilling to give up their right to lay duties 

 upon imports, which were their chief source of revenue. The inland 

 States, on the other hand, were unwilling to make any agreement for 

 the levying of taxes directly upon real and personal property, the 



VOL. LIII. — 2Y 



