posts or duties on imports or exports. By repeated decisions of the United States Supreme Court, another provision has been substantially ingrafted in the Constitution—to wit, that neither the Federal Government nor the governments of the States shall tax any of the instrumentalities or exclusive property of the other. The result is that, except for possible provisions in the Constitutions of the several States, their respective legislative assemblies may regulate, restrict, or appropriate the property of its citizens to an unlimited extent, and may delegate this sovereign power to local municipal corporations created by them. In short, in virtue of the power of levying unlimited taxes, the power of the Legislatures of the States that make up the Federal Union is as absolute as that of the Czar of Russia or the Sultan of Turkey. Not only may they take in this form all the property in the commonwealth, but also the property of its citizens in other countries. There is no Federal constitutional hindrance to their taxing, to any amount, real estate in any other State or country owned by citizens resident within their territorial jurisdiction. The constitutional provision that private property must be paid for when taken for public uses mainly refers, in the States, to the taking of land for highways and other similar acts of necessity by eminent domain.[1]
How little the people of the United States recognize the fact that they are living under a dual form of government, with like powers to some extent, especially in respect to the exercise of taxation, finds an illustration in the following incident. The question was recently put to the writer by a gentleman who had filled with ability the office of Governor of one of the leading States of the Federal Union, how it happened that the Federal
- ↑ There is nothing in the Constitution of the State of New York which requires that taxation shall be general, so as to embrace all taxable persons in the State, or within any district of the State; or that it shall be equal, or that it shall be in proportion to the value of the property of the person taxed, or that it shall not be apportioned according to the benefit which each taxpayer is supposed to receive from the object on which the tax is expended."—People ex rel. Griffin vs. Mayer, 4. N. Y., 419, 1851.
"There is no constitutional limitation upon the legislative power to tax the persons and property of individuals within the State. The power may be exercised to pay debts contracted before the property-holder comes within the jurisdiction."—Pampelly vs. Village of Oswego, Ct. of App., 1863, N. Y.
"Unless restrained by provisions of the Federal Constitution, the power of the State as to the mode, form, and extent of taxation is unlimited when the subjects to which it applies are within her jurisdiction."—Kirtland vs. Hotchkiss, Connecticut.
"The Legislature can constitutionally impose a tax on all watches, pianos, carriages, dogs, spirituous liquors, or other chattels without reference to their value. It can impose an arbitrary tax upon any avocation or business without estimating its volume or value."—People vs. Equitable Trust Co. of New London, Conn., 1887; System of Taxation in the State of New York, prepared by Hon. Julien T. Davis, at request of a committee of the Legislature, 1888.
