Court, as given through Justice Miller in the celebrated "Loan Association vs. Topeka" case (20 Wallace, 665):
"It must he conceded that there are rights in every free government beyond the control of the State. A government which recognized no such rights, which held the lives, the liberty, and the property of its citizens subject at all times to the absolute disposition and unbounded control of even the most democratic depository of power, is after all but a despotism. It is true it is a despotism, of the many—of the majority, if you choose to call it so—but it is none the less a despotism."
And yet can there be any doubt that the American people would have abandoned its proud historical position if the Supreme Court had decided in 1885 that the income-tax enactment of 1894 was constitutional?
For such a decision would practically have removed any constitutional limitation on the exercise of the power of taxation by Congress, and in this way: First, by establishing that an income tax is not a direct tax, there can be practically thereafter no direct taxes to which the constitutional mandate of apportionment will apply, for popular sentiment will never sanction the enactment of a general "capitation" or "poll" tax, or a direct tax on land.
Then it certainly could not be unconstitutional to multiply classes for taxation according to wealth and increase the rate up to the point of confiscation. Can any one, furthermore, doubt that the primary object of the enactment proposed in 1889 was not the raising of revenue for the national Treasury, but rather to permit a part of the people of the country to impose discriminating taxes on the people of another part, and then jS.xing a general exemption at so high a rate that those of the first part, who are entirely able, should not be required to pay anything? If this exemption, in place of $4,000, had been fixed only to include the average annual wages or earnings of the working masses of the country, is it probable that Congress would have even considered the enactment of the income tax of 1884? Even before the form of the statute of 1884 was reported from the proper committee, speculation was indulged in to the effect that the constituents of certain districts would not have to pay anything in the way of income taxes under it. That the Government also practically conceded that the income-tax enactment of 1884 was pre-eminently class legislation is also evident from the following extract from a statement made in a brief by the Attorney General of the United States pending the consideration of the income-tax question by the United States Supreme Court:[1]
- ↑ By an enactment of Congress, August 18, 1894, establishing an income tax for the United States, a tax of two per cent was imposed on the gains, profits, and incomes of
