A Century of Federal Judicature. that exercise is intrusted, to overstep the just boundaries of their own department, and enter upon the domain of one of the others, or to assume powers not intrusted to either of them. The House of Representatives having the exclusive right to originate all bills for raising1 revenue, whether by taxation or otherwise; having, with the Senate, the right to declare war, and fix the compensation of all officers and servants of the government, and vote the supplies which must pay that compensation; and being also the most numerous body of all those engaged in the exercise of the primary powers of the gov ernment,—is for these reasons least of all liable to encroachments upon its appropriate domain. By reason, also, of its popular origin, and the frequency with which .the short term of office of its members requires the renewal of their authority at the hands of the people,—the great source of all power in this country,—encroachments by that body on the domain of coordinate branches of the government would be received with less dis trust than a similar exercise of unwarranted power by any other department of the gov ernment. It is all the more necessary, there fore, that the exercise of power by this body, when acting separately from and indepen dently of all other depositaries of power, should be watched with vigilance, and when called in question before any other tribunal having the right to pass upon it that it should receive the most careful scrutiny." In United States v. Lee, 106 U. S. 196, and Loan Association 7r. Topeka, 20 Wall. 655, he asserted the inviolability of private prop erty. In the former case the government claimed the Arlington estate of the Lee fam ily by virtue of the terms of a tax sale during the Civil War, and denied any recourse to the former owners. But Justice Miller as serted that the doctrine that, except where Congress has so provided, the United States cannot be sued, has no application to officers and agents of the United States in possession i
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of property for public uses, when sued there for by persons claiming to be the lawful own ers. "No man in this country," he said, "is so high that he is above the law. No officer of the law may set that law at defiance with impunity. All the officers of the government, from the highest to the lowest, are creatures of the law, and are bound to obey it. It is the only supreme power in our system of gov ernment, and every man who, by accepting office, participates in its functions, is only the more strongly bound to submit to that supremacy, and to observe the limitations which it imposes upon the exercise of the au thority which it gives. Courts of justice are established, riot only to decide upon the con troverted rights of the citizens as against each other, bat also upon rights in contro versy between them and the government; and the docket of this court is crowded with controversies of the latter class. Shall it be said, in the face of all this, and of the acknowl edged right of the judiciary to decide in proper cases statutes which have been passed by both branches of Congress and approved by the President to be unconstitutional, that the courts cannot give a remedy when the citizen has been deprived of his property by force, his estate seized and converted to the use of the government without lawful author ity, without process of law, and without com pensation, because the President has ordered it and his officers are in possession? If such be the law of this country, it sanctions a tyranny which has no existence in the mon archies of Europe, nor in any other govern ment which has a just claim to well-regulated liberty and the protection of personal rights." In Loan Association v. Topeka, he ex pounded the doctrine that there can be no lawful tax which is not laid for a public pur pose. "It must be conceded," he said, "that there are such [private] rights in every free government beyond the control of the State. A government which recognized no such rights, which held the lives, the liberty and the
