The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1885-02-13
TAXATION.
Annual Meeting Of the Farmers
Alliance Of Nebraska.
Address by Hon. j.. Sterling Iorton-Con-
stitutional Limits of Taxation
Money a Competing Product
That is Not Taxed-Jus-
tice Must Prevails

was in convention at Lincoln January 9th,
for the consideration of political and eco
nonical questions affecting the interests of
the farmers. Among the speakers was j.
Sterling Morton, who delivered the follow
ing address:
To an age ike the one in which we live,
mostly practical and contamination of COM
of the Garden of Eden, is not so attractive
as the fact that it was improved real estate
wholly exempt from taxation. And among
all earthly beatitudes, lost by that fall of our
common parents because of the eating of
the forbidden fruit; the felicity of living ut
terly untaxed is, by as utilitarian an era as
this, estimated to be by far the most deSira-
Ole part of the lost bifthright, and seeming
ly the one most absolutely unrecoverable.
So long as there is no sin in the world-so
long the rights of the individual to life, lib
erty ana properly were unmoleSted, there
was no need of law, and therefore no need
of taxes to maintain the law.
TAXATION AN oUTGRowTH OF LAW.
Emerging from state of barbarism our
race realized and asserted that each of its
members had been born with certain inner
ent rights-the right to protect the person
and its liberty, and its earnings and aceunlu;
lations. Each man asserted such rights and
finally, by common consent, it was agreed
that all should protect the rights of each,
and so law, civil and criminal, was born into
human society. Thus the rights are the
cause of the law, and the law sequence of
the rights To preserve these rights is the
function of all law and the end Of it; and the
greatest vigilance of a people should be al
ways intelligently alert to prevent the laws
being so formed, and so executed, as to
abridge or destroy the very rights out of
which they are evolved, instead of acknowl-
edging these rights and conserving them.
The formation of corporations called gov
ernments, are solely to protect these inherent
rights. For the service which they render
by conserving the life liberty and property
of the citizens they make charge, and the
citizens pay it, and it is called taxation. The
sovereign alone-the Government alone-has
the right to tax, and the fathers of this Gov
eminent, recognizing (as the Supreme Court
of the United States, through Chief Justice
Marshall, has since declared) that the
power to tax is the power to destroy, were
limiting that power.
CONSTITUTIONAL LIMITS OF TAXATION.
Therefore, in the Constitution of the
United States it is declared that Congress
shall have power to impose taxes only to
provide revenue for the payment of the
public debt to provide for the common de-
Tense, and to promote the general welfare
"of the United States" 1t is asserted, and
without fear of successful refutation, by
very many good citizens, that the Govern
ment of the United States has no constitu-
tonal or other right to impose taxes on the
people except with the intent and result of
getting money into the public treasury with
which to pay the public debt, to provide for
the common defense and to promote the
general welfare of the United States, and
all tariff taxes called protective, laid with far
different intent and result than getting
money into the National Treasury, ought to
be utterly abolished" Judge Cooley, of Mich
igan, an eminent authority says:
Taxes are defined as being the enforced
proportional contribution of persons and
property, levied by the authority of the State
for the support of the Government, and for
all public needs"
A tariff laid upon imports for the purpose
of raising a revenue is a tax. If such tag,
by tariff, be justly levied and collected,
and results only in the revenue required for
an economical administration of the Govern
ment, | can see no objection to it, because
all taxes must be taken from the exchanges
of the people, or the property of the people;
and it matters not whether upon exchanges
other Nations, or from internal exchanges
and home products, if they only be equal
and just: A tariff for revenue affords very
little protection; and tariff for protection
affords very little revenue. Where the in
cident OF protection begins the incident of
revenue diminishes If little protection
imperfect protection-Wi1l be good thing for
all the 100000 Americans, then much pro-
tectiOn-perfect prOtectiOn-Will be better
thing for all these millions of human beings.
The tariff for raising revenue by collecting
duties on imports everybody admits to be a
tax Therefore tariff for protection which
keeps out imports and thereby EXCHANGES
the prices of those home products which are
thus given monopoly of the American
markets, must be, and is, far greater tax,
and all the more unjust 1t is unjust because
it makes an artificial price for the things we
have to buy by shutting out competition from
abroad, and because while it thus takes from
all the people it brings little if any revenue to
the National Treasury. 1t compelS us by law to
contribute of our earnings not solely to the
support of the Government, but to the direct
maintenance of favored class of citizens
engaged in certain manufactures which are
thus statute spawned mOnOpolieS. The dis
tinction between tariff for revenue and q
ri g nj A for in
for revenue takes money from all of us and
places it where it belongs, in the treasury of
the people. A tariff for protection takes
money from all of us, and gives it to few of
us. And it is against this misuse of the SOW
ereignty in taxing the whole for the benefit
and enrichment of the few that we protest
1T is class legislation. 1t is an avoidance of
the constitutional limitation of the taxing
power. 1t is not for the payment of the pub
lie debt. 1t is not for the public defense. 1t
is not to promote the general welfare of the
United States. 1t prevents revenue with
which to pay the public debt. Itweakens the
means of common defense 1t is antagonistic
to the general welfare of the United States.
Anything which artificially enhances the
use in the homes of the multitudes-though
it may make millionaireS of a few men-is
against the general welfare of the United
States. The greatest good to the greatest
number can never be secured to a people
whose Government levies the greatest taxes
on the greatest number for the benefit of the
veTsed, and the great effort is, by the pro-
tective system, to give the greatest good-by
an unrighteous use of the power to taX-to
the minimum monopolies, and a the ex-
pense of the maximum multitude.
OLD .HERESIES IN NEW DRESS-RANDALL'S
SPEECHES IN THE SOUTH
But the question of Federal taxation has
recently been discussed in the Southern
States il series of speeches by the Hon.
Samuel j. Randall; and instead therefore, of
trying to interest you with an elaborate argu-
ment on general principles it will be my en-
deavor to quote from, review and possibly
attempt to answer some of the declarations
and opinions of the gentleman as advanced
by him at Louisville, on Monday evening,
December 20, 1884, and subsequently at other
Southern points. Among the best and most
notable things in the Kentucky speech, is
Mr.. RandalPs confession of faith in the Ne
braSka
DECLARATION AGAINST THE CONSTITUTION
Atty OF ATARIFF FOR PROTECTION
which he makes in these uneVaSiVe words:
81 do not believe there is in the constitution
of the United States an authority to levy i'm
port duties for protection, for protectors
sake In other words, / can find nothing
which gives authority to the Congress of the
United States to raise taxes on import duties
for protection per se." So far Mr. Randall
agrees with the utteranceS of gentlemen in
the Northwest who are frequently and
hippantly denominated free trade cranks,''
and it is very much to the eX-Speaker's credit
that he has come, at last, to so
reasonable and just conclusion. But
the pleasure in the perusal of that sentence
passes into perplexity when we read the
next one following, tO-wit: 81 say also that |
would SO levy the duties on the imports into
the United States that the difference be-
tween the foreign product and the American
article, when the two are here in competi-
ton, so that the difference in the foreign
rate OF interest and that of our own country
the difference in the wages of the me-
chanic and .laborer abroad and the laborer
here. shall be equal only to fill the gap"
Now, if Mr.. Randall means anything at all
in this utterance, he means that he would
levy tax to protect us against the low-in-
terest money and the low-wages labor of
Europe and how can we do it when he de-
clareS that there is no warrant in the con-
stitution for doing it?
MONEY A COMPETING PRODUCT THAT IS NOT
TAXED.
But English money-all foreign capital
has always been free to invade the domain of
American exchanges and enterprises.
There has never, fortunately, been any tariff
on foreign gold or silver, and unrestricted it
has poured into the United State and con-
structed railroads and canals, and crowded
itself into nearly every avenue of trade.
The demand for it has been great and the
supply has been so large, under perfect free
trade in money, that the rates of interest
has been reduced very visibly in the last ten
years in the United States, and the COM
DetitiVe reduction still goes on apace. The
economic law of supply and demand is
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