No one has or will contend that the Supreme Court fell into error when it declared that: "Except as applied to income, those provisions of the Constitution that require an apportionment according to population for direct taxes" are not repealed or modified, as "this limitation has still an appropriate and important function, and is not to be overridden by Congress, or disregarded by the Courts." No one need doubt that this function was to prevent ultimate discord in our own country, that from the similar danger of too distant power of consent, had already rended in twain the British Empire.
We, thus, know the real "genesis" and high purpose, still subsisting, for which this provision was twice inserted in the Constitution; that it was to safeguard our Liberty against what all experience had demonstrated had always, theretofore, destroyed it; that is, the unlimited power of consent regarding direct taxation placed in the control of those too distant from us to insure fair and intelligent use.
And so the Sixteenth Amendment completely fails to establish the clarity of consent, necessary to let us continue freemen, except regarding but one phase of the matter, "income" alone. It not only does not grant but absolutely negatives any further power. We know how modern amendments to the Constitution have been made. We cannot possibly know how Congress and the Legislatures came to let down the bars in a matter that the Constitution still admittedly declares dangerous to American Liberty, as a general principle. The Amendment, or the discussion preceding it, gives us no clear light whatever upon the subject. Each of us may speculate upon that subject as he pleases. But we do know that the fundamental principle has only been
