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President's opinion, of a purely local character, or, as he says, "if it can be considered national, no further distinction between the appropriate duties of the General and State Governments need be attempted, for there can be no local interest that may not with equal propriety be denominated national."

improper to raise more than would be adequate to those purposes. It may fairly be inferred these restraints or checks have been carefully and intentionally avoided. The power in each branch is alike broad and unqualified, and each is drawn with peculiar fitness to the other, the latter requiring terms of great extent and force to accommodate the former, which have been adopted, and both placed in the same cause and sentence. Can it be presumed that all these circumstances were so nicely adjusted by mere accident? Is it not more just to conclude that they were the result of due deliberation and design? Had it been intended that Congress should be restricted in the appropriation of the public money to such expenditures as were authorized by a rigid construction of the other specific grants, how easy would it have been to have provided for it by a declaration to that effect. The omission of such declaration is therefore an additional proof that it was not intended that the grant should be so construed."

"If, then," Monroe continues, "the right to raise and appropriate the public money is not restricted to the expenditures under the other specific grants according to a strict construction of their powers, respectively, is there no limitation to it? Have Congress a right to raise and appropriate to any and to every purpose according to their will and pleasure? They certainly have not. The Government of the United States is a limited Government, instigated for great national purposes, and for those only. Other interests are committed to the States, whose duty it is to provide for them. Each government should look to the great and essential purposes for which it was instituted and confine itself to those purposes. A state government will rarely if ever apply money to national purposes without making it a charge to the nation. The people of the State would not permit it. Nor will Congress be apt to apply money in aid of the state administrations for purposes strictly local in which the nation at large has no interest, although the State should desire it. The people of the other States would condemn it. They would declare that Congress had no right to tax them for such a purpose, and dismiss at the next election such of their representatives as had voted for the measure, especially if it would be severely felt. I do not think that in offices of this kind there is much danger of the two governments mistaking their interests or their duties. I rather expect that they would soon have a clear and distinct understanding of them and move on in great harmony. Good roads and canals will promote many very important national purposes. They will facilitate the operations of war, the movements of troops, the transportation of cannon, of provisions, and every warlike store, much to our advantage and to the disadvantage of the enemy in time of war. Good roads will facilitate the transportation of the mail, and thereby promote the purposes of

The extent of the appropriating power of Congress is illustrated in the case of United States v. Realty Co.,2 in which was upheld the power of Congress to appropriate money for the payment of certain claims which the Federal Government was not legally but only morally obligated to satisfy. The court said: "We are of opinion that the parties in these actions acquired claims upon the Government of an equitable, moral or honorary nature Congress has power to lay and collect taxes, etc., to pay the debts' of the United States. Having the power to raise money for that purpose, it of course follows that it has power when the money is raised to appropriate it to the same object. The term debts' includes those debts

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or claims which rest upon a merely equitable or honorary obligation, and which would not be recoverable in a court of law if existing against an individual. . Payments to individuals, not of right or of a merely legal claim, but payments in the nature of gratuity, yet having some feature of moral obligation to support them, have been made by the government by virtue of acts of Congress, appropriating the public money, ever since its foundation. Some of the acts were based upon considerations of commerce and political intelligence among the people. They will by being properly directed to these objects enhance the value of our vacant lands, a treasure of vast resource to the nation. To the appropriation of the public money to improvements having these objects in view and carried to a certain extent I do not see any well-founded constitutional objection. . . . The right of appropriation is nothing more than a right to apply the public money to this or to that purpose. It has no incidental power, nor does it draw after it any consequences of that kind. All that Congress could do under it in the case of internal improvements would be to appropriate the money necessary to make them. For every act requiring legislative sanction or support the state authority must be relied on. The condemnation of the land, if the proprietors should refuse to sell it, the establishment of turnpikes and tolls, and the protection of the work when finished must be done by the State. To these purposes the powers of the General Government are believed to be utterly incompetent. . . The substance of what has been urged on this subject may be expressed in a few words. My idea is that Congress have an unlimited power to raise money, and that in its appropria tion they have a discretionary power, restricted only by the duty to appropriate it to purposes of common defense and of general, not local, national, not state, benefit."

26 163 U. S. 427; 16 Sup. Ct. Rep. 1120; 41 L. ed. 215.

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pure charity.27 In regard to the question whether the facts existing in any given case bring it within the description of that class of claims which Congress can and ought to recognize as founded upon equitable and moral considerations and grounded upon principles of right and justice, we think that generally such question must in its nature be one for Congress to decide for itself. Its decision recognizing such a claim and appropriating money for its payment can rarely, if ever, be the subject of review by the judicial branch of the Government."

§ 270. Equality in Taxation.

The Fourteenth Amendment requires upon the part of the States that they shall not deny to any persons within their several jurisdictions the equal protection of the laws, and this obligation is, of course, operative in the field of taxation. No similarly phrased obligation is laid upon the Federal Government, but the provision of the Fifth Amendment forbidding the taking of property without due process of law imposes an obligation broad enough to cover all or nearly all cases of unequal protection of the laws. And, furthermore, as to taxes it is specifically provided that they shall be uniform throughout the United States.28

Whether or not the equal protection of the laws is included within the general protection against the taking of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, the provision for equal protection does certainly mark off a specific right or a group of rights within the general field of rights against the violation of which by the States he is guaranteed by the Constitution. That this protection applies within the field of taxation is well established. A case clearly stating this doctrine is that of County of Santa Clara v. S. Pacific R. R. Co.,28a in which Justice Field rendered the opinion. "With the adoption of the Fourteenth

27 Senator Daniel in a speech on the Blair Educational Bill enumerated some forty instances in which Congress had appropriated money to private individuals. Cong. Record, XXI, Pt. 3, p. 2295, 1890.

28 The Insular Cases held that this clause has no application to unincorporated Territories.

28a 18 Fed. Rep. 385.

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Amendment," Field declared, "the power of the States to oppress any one under any pretense or in any form was forever ended; and henceforth all persons within their jurisdiction could claim equal protection under the laws. And by equal protection is meant equal security to every one in his private rights — in his right to life, to liberty, to property, and to the pursuit of happiness. It implies not only that the means which the laws afford for such security shall be accessible to him, but that no one shall be subject to any burdens or charges than such as are imposed upon all others under like circumstances. This protection attends every one everywhere, whatever be his position in society or his association with others, either for profit, improvement or pleasure. No State in such is the sovereign command of the whole people of the United Statesno State shall touch the life, the liberty, or the property of any person, however humble his lot or exalted his station, without due process of law, and no State, even with due process of law, shall deny to any one within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the law. Unequal taxation, so far as it can be prevented is therefore, with other unequal burdens, prohibited by the Amendment. There undoubtedly are, and always will be, more or less inequalities in the operation of all general legislation arising from the different conditions of persons from their means, business, or position in life, against which no foresight can guard. But this is a very different thing, both in purpose and effect, from a carefully devised scheme to produce such inequality; or a scheme, if not so devised, necessarily producing that result. Absolute equality may not be attainable, but gross and designed departures from it will necessarily bring the legislation authorizing it within the prohibition."

As has been already noted, the determination as to when a tax shall be levied and upon what persons and property, and by what rule it is to be assessed and by what means collected is a legislative function. However, in levying an ad valorem tax, the legislature may not determine the assessment value of particular pieces of property. So also it follows that while the legislature may, within

its discretion, determine freely what occupations, or classes of property or persons are to be taxed, it may not select out from the general mass of property, or general citizen body, particular pieces of property or particular individuals to bear the burden of the tax. When, therefore, a tax is laid upon certain classes of property or of persons, there must be some reasonable basis for the classifications adopted. By this is meant that there must be some substantial reason why the units, whether of property or of individuals, should be treated as distinct groups.

In Bell's Gap Railroad Co. v. Pennsylvania was involved the validity of a state law which levied a certain tax on all moneyed securities according to their actual value, except that as to all bonds and other securities issued by corporations their nominal or par value should be the basis. It being argued that this violated the requirement of the Fourteenth Amendment as to the equal protection of the laws, the court said: "But, be this as it may, the law does not make any discrimination in this regard which the State is not competent to make. All corporate securities are subject to the same regulation. The provision in the Fourteenth Amendment, that no State shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, was not intended to prevent a State from adjusting its system of taxation in all proper and reasonable ways. It may, if it chooses, exempt certain classes of property from any taxation at all, such as churches, libraries and the property of charitable institutions. It may impose different specific taxes upon different trades and professions, and may vary the rates of excise upon various products; it may tax real estate and personal property in a different manner; it may tax visible property only, and not tax securities for payment of money; it may allow deductions for indebtedness, or not allow them. All such regulations, and those of like character, so long as they proceed within reasonable limits and general usage, are within the discretion of the state legislature, or the people of the State in framing their Constitution. But clear and hostile discriminations against particular persons and classes, especially such 23 134 U. S. 232; 10 Sup. Ct. Rep. 533; 33 L. ed. 892.

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