Another proposition which has received the indorsement of high judicial authority in the United States[1] is to employ Federal taxation for the crushing out of State lotteries, with the absurd accompaniment of no revenue (taxes); for if the desired object is attained, the payment of taxes and the, procurement of revenue will be prevented. It seems clear, also, that if such a measure was once adopted it would constitute a precedent and authority for the destruction by the Federal Government, through the exercise of the taxing power, of nearly every faculty or power now belonging to and exercised by the several States; and that houses of prostitution, gambling and liquor saloons, opium "joints," and other haunts of vice now under the control and supervision of the police powers of the States might be regulated or suppressed by Federal taxation, as well as lotteries,[2]
- ↑ Judge Cooley, Atlantic Monthly, April, 1892.
- ↑ "Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are in the exclusive province of the States."—United States Supreme Court, Gibbons vs. Oyden, 9 Wheaton, i, 199.
every other government, and which would affect the most unlimited government in the world. These principles are that government is created with limitations flowing from the nature of its being, which teach that no government shall use its power for the benefit of the few to the detriment of the many. Therefore, all the arguments which have been made on the subject of the abuse of the impost power in the Federal Government are arguments addressing themselves not to the limit of delegation under the Constitution as to imposts, but to the want of power arising from the very nature of government itself. The usurpation of power by Congress, not vested by the Constitution in Congress, is unconstitutional."
The point here at issue was also clearly recognized by President Cleveland, in his message in 1886, announcing his signature to a bill (above noticed) for taxing oleomargarine, where the real intent of taxation was popularly assumed to be prohibitive of production and sale and not revenue. "It has been urged," he said, "as an objection to this measure that while purporting to be legislation for revenue, its real purpose is to destroy, by the use of the taxing power, one industry of our people for the protection and benefit of another. If entitled to indulge in such a suspicion as a basis of official action in this case, and if entirely satisfied that the consequences indicated would ensue, I should doubtless feel constrained to interpose executive dissent." In other words, the President took the bill as it came to him as ostensibly a revenue measure, and in the exercise of his executive prerogative passed upon it as such, but at the same time he was careful to say in this message that if that bill had not presented that aspect to him, he would have been constrained to exercise the executive veto.
In the course of the debate to which reference has been made, Mr. White, in response to a question as to what he would as a Senator consider his duty in respect to a bill proposed to Congress for enactment which, while undoubtedly productive of revenue, was intended for some other purpose, made answer as follows: "I would have two questions to ask myself: Is this a bill raising revenue? That is the first question. If I determine that question in the affirmative, the lamp of my duty might lead my mind toward supporting that bill, but it could not carry me to that point unless another question were also answered: Is it an honest exercise of the taxing power, or is it a dishonest scheme to raise revenue and accomplish another purpose? If my mind, in the exercise of my duty here, found that either of these things existed, then, although it was a bill raising revenue, I would not vote for a dishonest bill raising revenue."
