PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 389 



things no longer exists; for in the brief submitted to, and in the 

 argument made before the United States Supreme Court adverse 

 to the constitutionality of the jDrovisions of the income-tax enact- 

 ment of August, 1894, by Hon. Clarence A. Seward, a department 

 of national history which no historian or jurist had ever before 

 completely exploited, was so traversed by him that it is difficult to 

 see how any one can acquaint himself with its results and doubt that, 

 although the framers of the Constitution and the people they repre- 

 sented might not fully agree as to a full and comprehensive definition 

 of a direct tax, there was apparently a perfect unanimity of opinion 

 among them that an income tax was a typical example of that kind of 

 taxation. 



Previous to the adoption of the Constitution there were no 

 Federal taxes, and all precedents for helping to a correct determina- 

 tion of the constitutional meaning of direct taxation must therefore 

 be drawn from the prior experience of the several States. 



"V^niat was that experience? Recent historical research shows that 

 Massachusetts had taxed incomes for more than a hundred years prior 

 to the assembling of the Constitutional Convention; other of the 

 leading States were imposing like taxes at or about 1787, and the 

 receipts therefrom were used to help pay the quotas demanded by the 

 then Government of the Confederation for the maintenance of the 

 Federal Government. The income tax so paid, and all the other 

 internal taxes collected by the States, were known as and called direct 

 taxes and are so called to-day. 



The Constitutional Convention empowered Congress to levy any 

 of the authorized forms of taxation on the States; but the levy of 

 direct taxes was guarded by a provision that such taxes should be 

 apportioned to the population. The explanation of this curious 

 anomaly is that the consensus of opinion in the convention was that 

 wealth at that period was so equitably divided among the people of 

 the States that population was the best measure of wealth and conse- 

 quently of equitable taxation. But what would become of the ele- 

 ment of equality if the levy was in the form of indirect taxes — duties, 

 imposts, and excises — which, falling on the consumption of tea, coffee, 

 sugar, spirits, and the like, leave it optional with the citizen in a great 

 degree whether he will pay or not ? Hamilton certainly thought that 

 the door had been effectually closed against the possibility of any 

 such evasion, for, when speaking of direct taxes in The Federalist, 

 he says : " An actual census or enumeration of the people must 

 furnish the rule; a circumstance which effectually shuts the door to 

 partiality or evasion." 



But any doubt on this subject ought no longer to be tolerated, 

 for we now have, almost for the first time, a definition of or distinc- 



