the remark, preliminary to announcing the decision of the court, that "no tribunal could approach such a question as was involved without a deep sense of its importance and of the awful responsibility involved in the decision."[1]
The decision of the court was unanimous that "the States have no power, by taxation or otherwise, to retard, impede, burden, or in any manner control the operation of the constitutional laws enacted by Congress to carry into execution the powers vested in the General Government; and that the law passed by the Legislature of Maryland imposing a tax on the Bank of the United States is unconstitutional and void."
"If we apply," said the Chief Justice, "the principle for which the State of Maryland contends to the Constitution generally, we shall find it capable of changing totally the character of that instrument. We shall find it capable of arresting all the measures of the Government, and of prostrating it at the foot of the States. The American people have declared their Constitution and the laws made in pursuance thereof to be supreme; but this principle would transfer the supremacy, in fact, to the States. If the States may tax one instrument employed by the Government in the execution of its powers, they may tax any and every other instrument. They may tax the mail; they may tax patent rights; they may tax the papers of the custom house; they may tax judicial process; they may tax all the means employed by the Government, to an excess which would defeat all the ends of government. This was not intended by the American people. They did not design to make their Government dependent on the States."
The court, however, held that its decision did not deprive "the States of any resources which they originally possessed. It does not extend to a tax paid by the real property of the bank, in common with the other real property within the State, nor to a tax imposed on the interest which the citizens of Maryland may hold in this institution, in common with other property of the same description throughout the State. But this is a tax on the operation of the bank, and is consequently a tax on the operation of an instrument employed by the Government of the Union to carry its powers into execution. Such a tax must be unconstitutional."[2]
- ↑ "No more impressive words are to be found in any English or American adjudication than those uttered by Chief-Justice Marshall as a preamble to the judgment in this most interesting and important case."—Francis Hillard, The Law of Taxation.
- ↑ The following additional extracts from the decision of the court in this celebrated case will help to a further elucidation of its involved subject-matters:
"In the case now to be determined," said the Chief Justice, "the defendant, a sovereign State, denies the obligation of a law enacted by the Legislature of the Union; and the plaintiff, on his part, contests the validity of an act which has been passed by the Legislature of that State. The Constitution of our country, in its most interesting and vital
