PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 53 



erty, in order to secure and have the perfect enjoyment of the re- 

 mainder. Governments are established for the protection of 

 persons and property within the limits of the state, and taxes 

 are levied to enable the government to afford and give such pro- 

 tection. They are the price and consideration of the protection 

 afforded." (Ingersol, J., Circuit Court of the United States, Duer 

 vs. Small.) 



" There is nothing poetic about tax laws. When they find 

 property, they claim a contribution for its protection." (Lowrie, 

 Chief Justice, Tinley vs. The City, etc., 32 Penn., 381.) 



Montesquieu, writing with the monarchical institutions of 

 France mainly or solely in view, discusses this subject in his 

 Spirit of Laws (book xxxi, chap, i), as follows : " The public 

 revenues are a portion that each subject gives of his property, 

 in order to secure or enjoy the remainder." 



" The right to tax an individual results from the general pro- 

 tection afforded to himself and his property." Vattel, Law of Na- 

 tions, book i, chap. xx. 



" Property and law (i. e., government or the state) are born 

 together and die together. Before laws were made, there was no 

 property ; take away laws, and property ceases." Bentham, The- 

 ory of Legislation. 



The principle here involved is also clearly and succinctly 

 further expressed in the following citations : 



" Taxation " is, in any view, taking private property for public use, and it 

 can not be so taken without an equivalent, both as to the Government or 

 the citizens. It is not competent to convert private property to public use 

 by way of taxation, and without compensation, any more than by any 

 other mode. 



Taxation (if anything in the nature of principle is assumed as its basis) 

 therefore implies that the government imposing it will return an equiva- 

 lent. But to return an equivalent in the form that was taken, namely, 

 money, would be stultification. The only equivalent that a government 

 can return, and the only one, in truth, that justifies taxation, is in the na- 

 ture of a guarantee that the person, property, or business on which the tax 

 is imposed shall have all the rights which the civilization of the state repre- 

 sents, or, in other words, "protection." Redfield. 



" If it were practicable to do so," says Justice Cooley, " the taxes levied 

 by any government ought to be apportioned among the people according 

 to the benefit which each receives from the protection the government 

 affords him. This is upon the assumption, never wholly true in point of 

 fact, but sufficiently near the truth for the practical operations of govern- 

 ment, that the benefit received from the government is in proportion to the 

 property held or the revenues enjoyed under its protection." Cooley, On 

 Taxation, pp. 14-17. 



Notwithstanding this preponderance of opinion, argument, 

 and legal decisions in favor of the correlation of taxation and 



