The second reference is missing. (Wikisource contributor note)--Mariewalton (talk) 01:38, 9 September 2013 (UTC)
authorized by Congress, without any challenge before the proper courts of their constitutionality? The answer is to be found in the legal fact that "the question of the constitutionality of a law can never be presented and determined abstractly. It must always be raised by somebody whose person or property is affected by the execution of the statute the validity of which he impugns.[1] Until the opportunity for raising and the individual who can raise the question of constitutionality present themselves, there can be no presumption from the existence of such legislation upon the statutebook."
In Maine, a law which for more than half a century—almost as long as the State has existed—had been enforced, and reproduced in each revision of the statutes, was declared unconstitutional so soon as challenged; the chief justice meeting the reason for such acquiescence by saying that "the judicial opinion and the public sense were not so much awakened to the principle underlying this then as now." (Brief of Smith and Clarke, averring the unconstitutionality of the tariff act of 1800.)
The nature, definition, and limitations of the service for public purposes, which a free representative government can render or perform by the expenditure of moneys raised by taxation having been once ascertained and enunciated by the supreme judicial authority of the State (as would seem to have been done in the United States), the instant, thereafter, that taxation essays to become anything but taxation—i. e., for an unquestionable public purpose; the instant that it is made an instrumentality for effecting any results other than such as are directly necessary or beneficial to the whole public, that instant it becomes inequitable and antagonistic to the very idea of a just government; and the citizen whose person or property is thereby affected has at least a moral right to demand protection and redress.
[To be continued.]
According to Mr. Meredith Nugent, in Our Animal Friends, elephants like fun. Two little elephants at Bridgeport, he says, take evident pleasure in the tasks that are set them. Even in the stable, when no trainer was about, one of them "would stand on its head just as it was used to do in the circus, and the other would look anxiously on until its own turn came to stand on its head and be admired by its companion."
- ↑ "It is by facts and instances that the people are taught their Constitutions and their laws. Constitutions are framed; laws established; institutions built up; the processes of society go on, until at length, by some opposing, some competing, some contending forces of the State, an individual is brought into the point of collision, and the clouds surcharged with the great force of the public welfare burst over his head."—Speech of Mr. Evarts for the Defense, in the Impeachment of President Johnson.
