Salmon P. Chase

“ In respect, however, to property, business, and persons, within their respective limits, their power of taxation remained and remains entire. It is indeed a concurrent power, and in the case of a tax on the same subject by both governments, the claim of the United States, as the supreme authority, must be preferred ”

“ Justice Story, whose praise as a jurist is in all civilized lands, speaking of the clause in the Constitution giving to Congress the power to lay and collect taxes, says, of the theory which would limit the power to the object of paying the debts, that, thus limited, it would be only a power to provide for the payment of debts then existing. ”

“ Be this as it may, we all think that the interpretation which they sanction is well warranted. We cannot attribute to the legislature an intent to include taxes under the term debts without something more than appears in the acts to show that intention. ”

“ Under the Articles of Confederation the government of the United States was limited in the exercise of this power to requisitions upon the States, while the whole power of direct and indirect taxation of persons and property, whether by taxes on polls, or duties on imports, or duties on internal production, manufacture, or use, was acknowledged to beiong exclusively to the States, without any other limitation than that of non-interference with certain treaties made by Congress. The Constitution, it is true, greatly changed this condition of things. ”