Edward Douglass White

“ The injustice of the conclusion points to the error of adopting it. It takes invested wealth, and reads it into the constitution as a favored and protected class of property, which cannot be taxed without apportionment, while it leaves the occupation of the minister, the doctor, the professor, the lawyer, the inventor, the author, the merchant, the mechanic, and all other forms of industry upon which the prosperity of a people must depend, subject to taxation without that condition. ”

“ Moreover, the contention that a state could, by payment of the whole sum of a tax on persn al property, apportioned according to population, relieve the citizen from grievous wrong to result from its enforcement against his property, is an admission that the collection of such tax against the property of the citizen, because of its injustice, would be practically impossible. ”

“ The decision here announced, holding that the tax on the income from real estate and the tax on the income from personal property and investments are direct, and therefore require apportionment, rests necessarily on the proposition that the word 'direct,' in the constitution, must be construed in the economic sense; that is to say, whether a tax be direct or indirect is to be e sted by ascertaining whether it is capable of being shifted from the one who immediately pays it to an ultimate consumer. If it cannot be so shifted, it is direct ”

“ In other words, in order to escape the effect of the act and of the decision upon it, it is argued that they did not, by necessary implication, establish that direct taxes were only land and capitation taxes; and in the same breath, in order to avoid the force of the harmonious interpretation of the constitution by all the great writers who have expounded it, we are told that their views are worthless, because they were misled by the Hylton Case. ”

“ How the decisions of this court settling one principle are to be cited as authority for that principle, and at the same time it is to be argued that other decisions, equally unanimous and concurrent, are no authority for another principle, involves a logical dilemma which cannot be solved. ”