386 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



smaller States fearing that tliej would be overborne by unequal 

 burdens forced upon them by the action of the larger States. In 

 this condition of things great embarrassment was felt by the members 

 of the convention. It was feared at times that the effort to form a 

 new Government would fail. But happily a compromise was effected 

 by an agreement that direct taxes should be levied by Congress by ap- 

 'portioning tliem among the States according to their representation. 

 In return for this concession by some of the States, the other States 

 bordering on navigable waters consented to relinquish to the new 

 Government the control of duties, imposts, and excises, and the 

 regulation of commerce, with the condition that the duties, imposts, 

 and excises should be unifortn throughout the United States; so 

 that, on the one hand, anything like oppression or undue advantage 

 of any one State over the others would be prevented by the appor- 

 tionment of the direct taxes among the States according to their 

 representation; and, on the other hand, anything like oppression or 

 hardship in the levying of duties, imposts, and excises would be 

 avoided by the provision that they should be uniform throughout the 

 United States. 



The Federal Constitution accordingly upon completion divided 

 the taxes that Congress might impose under it into two classes : those 

 which are direct and those which are indirect, or, as the letter of the 

 Constitution expresses it, " duties, imposts, and excises." It also pro- 

 vides that the former shall be apportioned, equally with representa- 

 tion in Congress, among the several States of the Union, according 

 to their respective numbers, that " no capitation or direct taxes 

 shall be laid unless in proportion to the census " ; and that the latter 

 class of taxes shall be " uniform throughout the United States." 



But from the beginning of the Federal Government the deter- 

 mination of the exact legal meaning of the word " direct " as applied 

 in the Constitution to taxation has been one of gTeat difficulty and 

 embarrassment, although the doctrine in England and her colonies, 

 before the adoption of the Constitution, was a favorite one, that 

 " taxation and representation should go together." * 



* The framers of the Constitution intended that the apportionment of direct taxes 

 among the States should be in more exact ratio to the population even than it is possible to 

 apportion the representation. For example : Suppose one representative to every ninety 

 thousand inhabitants, a State might have a large fraction left over ; but the apportionment 

 of direct taxes was designed to be with mathematical accuracy to the precise number of 

 persons ascertained by the census. After the first apportionment of representatives had 

 been made in the Federal Convention by estimated population, before an actual census, it 

 was held that the estimate of the population of the different States was not sufficiently 

 accurate for the apportionment of a direct tax ; and that, consequently, the General Gov- 

 ernment could not lay a direct tax until a census should have been taken. Elbridge Gerry, 

 of Massachusetts, moved that until a census be taken direct taxation be apportioned to the 



