Melville Fuller

“ If, in the changes of wealth and population in particular states, apportionment produced inequality, it was an inequality stipulated for, just as the equal representation of the states, however small, in the senate, was stipulated for. The constitution ordains affirmatively that each state shall have two members of that body, and negatively that no state shall by amendment be deprived of its equal suffrage in the senate without its consent. ”

“ Elaborate argument is made as to the efficacy and merits of an income tax in general, as on the one hand equal and just, and on the other elastic and certain; not that it is not open to abuse by such deductions and exemptions as might make taxation under it so wanting in uniformity and equality as in substance to amount to deprivation of property without due process of law ”

“ Those who made it knew that the power to tax involved the power to destroy, and that, in the language of Chief Justice Marshall, 'the only security against the abuse of this power is found in the structure of the government itself. In imposing a tax, the legislature acts upon its constituents. ”

“ We do not mean to say that an act laying by apportionment a direct tax on all real estate and personal property, or the income thereof, might not also lay excise taxes on business, privileges, employments, and vocations. ”

“ The reasons for the clauses of the constitution in respect of direct taxation are not far to seek. The states, respectively, possessed plenary powers of taxation. They could tax the property of their citizens in such manner and to such extent as they saw fit. They had unrestricted powers to impose duties or imposts on imports from abroad, and excises on manufactures, consumable commodities, or otherwise. They gave up the great sources of revenue derived from commerce. They retained the concurrent power of levying excises, and duties if covering anything other than excises ”

“ Nor are we impressed with the contention that, because in the four instances in which the power of direct taxation has been exercised, congress did not see fit, for reasons of expediency, to levy a tax upon personalty, this amounts to such a practical construction of the constitution that the power did not exist, that we must regard ourselves bound by it. ”

“ Nor can we perceive any ground why the same reasoning does not apply to capital in personalty held for the purpose of income, or ordinarily yielding income, and to the income therefrom. All the real estate of the country, and all its invested personal property, are open to the direct operation of the taxing power, if an apportionment be made according to the constitution. The constitution does not say that no direct tax shall be laid by apportionment on any other property than land ”

“ We have considered the act only in respect of the tax on income derived from real estate, and from invested personal property, and have not commented on so much of it as bears on gains or profits from business, privileges, or employments, in view of the instances in which taxation on business, privileges, or employments has assumed the guise of an excise tax and been sustained as such. ”

“ We find it impossibl to hold that a fundamental requisition deemed so important as to be enforced by two provisions, one affirmative and one negative, can be refined away by forced distinctions between that which gives value to property and the property itself. ”

“ And in order that the power of direct taxation by the general government should not be exercised except on necessity, and, when the necessity arose, should be so exercised as to leave the states at liberty to discharge their respective obligations, and should not be so exercised unfairly and discriminatingly, as to particular states or otherwise, by a mere majority vote, possibly of those whose constituents were intentionally not subjected to any part of the burden, the qualified grant was made. ”

“ The ultimate sovereignty may be thus called into play by a slow and deliberate process, which gives time for mere hypothesis and opinion to exhaust themselves, and for the sober second thought of every part of the country to be asserted. ”

“ Madison in the house was only so far disturbed by it that the court classified it where he himself would have held it constitutional, and he subsequently, as president, approved a similar act (3 Stat. 40) . The contention of Mr. Hamilton in the Federalist was not disturbed by it in the least. In our judgment, the construction given to the constitution by the authors of the Federalist (the five numbers contributed by Chief Justice Jay related to the danger from foreign force and influence, and to the treaty-making power) should not and cannot be disregarded. ”

“ Being invalid as to the greater part, and falling, as the tax would, if any part were held valid, in a direction which could not have been contemplated, except in connection with the taxation considered as an entirety, we are constrained to conclude that sections 27 to 37, inclusive, of the act, which became a law, without the signature of the president, on August 28, 1894, are wholly inoperative and void. ”

“ Gallatin said in his report when secretary of the treasury in 1812, 'upon the same objects of taxation on which the direct taxes levied under the authority of the state are laid and assessed.'
Personal property of some kind is of general distribution, and so are incomes, though the taxable range thereof might be narrowed through large exemptions. ”

“ The words of the constitution are to be taken in their obvious sense, and to have a reasonable construction. In Gibbons v. Ogden, Mr. Chief Justice Marshall, wt h his usual felicity, said: 'As men whose intentions require no concealment generally employ the words which most directly and aptly EXPRESS THE IDEAS THEY INTEND TO CONVEY, the enlightened patriots who framed our constitution, and the people who adopted it, must be understood to have employed words in their natural sense, and to have intended what they have said.' 9 Wheat. ”

“ Figures drawn from the census are given, showing that enormous assets of mutual insurance companies, of building associations, of mutual savings banks, large productive property of ecclesiastical organizations, are exempted, and it is claimed that the exemptions reach so many hundred millions that the rate of taxation would perhaps have been e duced one-half, if they had not been made. ”

“ Ct. 988, where it was urged that certain illegal exceptions in a section of a statute might be disregarded, but that the rest could stand: 'The insuperable difficulty with the application of that principle of construction to the present instance is that by rejecting the exceptions intended by the legislature of Georgia the statute is made to enact what, confessedly, the legislature never meant. ”