it is nevertheless true that the "co-relative" or "reciprocal" of taxation is protection; or, in other words, according to the political theory of our governments, national and State, and in fact of every government claiming the title to be free, taxes may be legitimately assumed to be the compensation which persons and property pay the State for protection. This assumption, it is believed, has been indorsed and accepted by every writer of repute on economic subjects who has discussed taxation from the time of Montesquieu down to a very recent period;[1]an in the repeated instances in which this matter has come before the courts for adjudication, the highest judicial authorities have uniformly given judgment or expressed opinions to the same effect. In confirmation of these statements the following citations are submitted:
"Where there is no protection," said Judge Story (in the case of the United States vs. Rice, 4 Wheaton, 276), "there can be no claim to allegiance or obedience." Again the same eminent authority (in the case of Miles vs. Duryea, Cranch, 481) thus strongly expresses himself: "It is an eternal principle of justice that jurisdiction can not be justly exercised by a State over property that is not within reach of its process that is, property which it can not protect."
"Taxes are a portion which each individual gives of his prop-
- ↑ "The philosophy of our plan of voluntary political association is, that all individuals, and all the values within a community, shall aggregate into one mass all the power which they separately contain, which sum total shall constitute a sovereignty of the whole. This sovereignty—the soul of the State, which can not be impaired and the State survive—reflects back upon its constituents, in detail, all that it has received from them. What it receives, and what it returns, is of two kinds, as to both source and object, viz., individual service to the Government, and protection to the individual from it. Thus, in his individual capacity, a man is bound to perform military service, and the State, by the military arm, is bound to protect him from invasion. He is bound to do jury duty, and the authorities are bound, upon his demand, to provide him a jury. He is bound to aid the sheriff, and the sheriff is bound to execute process in his favor by posse comutatus, if necessary. These personal services correspond to those which in feudal times the mesne lord, holding a frank tenement, owed the lord paramount. They can not be compounded for, for their value consists in their being rendered in kind. Their performance is the only price which the citizen pays for his citizenship. The terms are not only consistent and harmonious with our general scheme of government, but are highly politic. To all political privileges we admit each one by virtue of his being a man, free born, and of lawful age; we ask him nothing concerning his property, unless his property asks something from us."—Lowrey, Argument, New York Assembly, 1862.
in the pretense that the right in question is the simple right of might; that the ruling power, whether monarch or majority, is physically able to take and apply as it chooses all that the individuals ruled over called their own; and that because it can, it morally may, take whatever part it thinks fit. With simple ethics the leviers of taxes, whenever they are a distinct class, are wont to content themselves. But whatever countenance they have received from such moral philosophers as venerate successful force, the principle will hardly serve those who study the matter as taxpayers."—Theodore Bacon.
