been possible in the United States argues the gravest defect in its political system. That a check is needed of the most absolute kind is recognized by all thoughtful men. Such check can only be had from the Legislatures of the States, who can not be too prompt in correcting the evils resulting from this extraordinary surrender of their supreme jurisdiction on the vital subject of taxation. The Legislature holds the public purse, and is false to its trust as its custodian when it authorizes corporations to put their hands, unwatched, into this purse and take from it, uncounted, all that their extravagance and cupidity desire. It is no apology that city governments are chosen by popular vote. It is the essence of our government that personal rights are, by our Constitution, wholly independent of the voting power, and certainly property should be equally so protected."
The question here naturally arises, How happened it that the framers of the Constitution and founders of our Government, while carefully defining and limiting the powers of the Federal Government in respect to the taking of property through taxation, omitted to make any like provisions applicable to the States? An answer is, that it was probably an oversight, favored by the circumstance that there was no English precedent for suchp rovisions. At the time of the Revolution it was, and ever since has been, the occupation and duty of the British House of Commons to limit and, if considered expedient, resist the pecuniary demands of the crown, and latterly of its ministers; and this occupation and duty were never delegated without restriction to any
subordinate legislative assemblage. It might have been, and probably was, assumed by the framers of the Federal Constitution, that the several States in making their Constitutions would have followed the precedents respecting the rights and duties of taxation that they (the framers) had established; and, if the several Legislatures of the States had been confined to these rights and duties, and had never delegated them without restriction to the complicated, ill-organized, and irresponsible municipal corporations, which in latter days have grown to such portentous size, little of danger would have followed.[1] It should, however, be here noted that remedial action in this matter has recently been taken by some of the States, by forbidding their counties, cities, towns, or villages from incurring an indebtedness in excess of a percentage, varying with their population, of the valuation of the real estate subject to taxation. Constitutional restrictions on
- ↑ In his treatment of this important topic, the author is mainly indebted to Mr. Manley Howe, of Boston, who, in a newspaper article published some years ago, seems to have been the first person to intelligently present the facts in the case and their consequences to the general public.
