Roger B. Taney

“ Suppose a State should, as a source of revenue, establish in its own favor a monopoly of the retail traffic within the State in paper, vellum, and parchment, just as some foreign nations do with tobacco; it is obvious that it might thus fix on paper a price far exceeding its value in open market, and fully equal to a stamp tax, and thereby enhance the cost of all written contracts, including bills of lading, invoices, and marine policies; but in what just sense could this be called either a regulation of commerce between the States or a duty on exports? ”

“ All such lines of argument are fanciful, dangerous, and subversive of the true meaning of the Constitution.
No man is by the law in question forbidden to ship his gold-dust. He may accompany it. He may send an agent to take care of it; he may make a valid parol contract for its delivery abroad, and take twenty witnesses, in order to retain the evidence of his contract; but, if he wishes to reduce it to writing within the State, he must put his writing on a paper on which the State of California has levied a stamp tax. ”

“ A bill of lading, therefore, or some equivalent instrument of writing, is invariably associated with every cargo of merchandise exported to a foreign country, and consequently a duty upon that is, in substance and effect, a duty on the article exported. And if the law of California is constitutional, then every cargo of every description exported from the United States may be made to pay an export duty to the State, provided the tax is imposed in the form of a tax on the bill of lading, and this in direct opposition to the plain and express prohibition in the Constitution of the United States. ”