The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-03-14
ALL ARGUMENTS ARE ENDED
MR. CHOATE CLOSED IN 4 GOOD AT-
 TACK ON THE INCOME TAX.


 Justices of the Supreme Court so Deeply
 Interested That They Subjected Him to
 Many Questions on the Matter.
 Washington, March 13.-Mr. Choate
 made the closing argument against the
 income tax law to-day in the supreme
 court. He said that when he closed
 yesterday he was pointing out the
 ample means of indirect taxes open to
 the government to be applied under the
 rule of apportionment in equality and
 uniformity without resorting to direct
 taxes, and yet, that under that system
 of taxes as a last resort, the entire
 property of the people of the United
 States was open to congress for the
 welfare and defence of the government.
 He called attention to the distribution
 of the power of taxation and the limita-
 tions of the exercise of that power, from the operation of which it could
 not, by any device, escape. MT. Choate said he did not impute to the constitu-
 tional convention such heedlessness or ignorance as was suggested in one of the briefs on the other side, that he did not believe or understand that it covered the whole subject of taxation, by it's declaration with respect of direct taxes, imports, excises and duties.
 Coming to the argument of the proposition he had advanced, MT. Choate asked. How about the corpus of personal property?" If tax upon it was neither a direct tax, nor as im- port or excise or a duty, what would follow. Just that which Chief Justice Chase said many years ago would ap- ply-that it was tax to be enforced by congress and laid neither accord ing to apportlonment nor of equality one hundred years nobody had even suggested that such a tax could be so enforced and collected
 The true rule of construction, Mir Choate said, was to impute to the work of the constitutional convention the same interpretation that everybody else gave to it at the time and had ever since given It. Mir. Wadleigh of New Hampshire had the true idea when he said. discussing the operation of the taxing clause, that 1t would bear hardly upon his state, but that New Hampshire would consent to 1t In or der to have the constitution adopted. Why should it bear hardly upon New Hampshire, with It's mountains and rocky hillsides were 1t not that all taxes, except duties imports and ex- cises should be apportioned according to population.
 MT Choate asserted that the tax upon real estate, the rents and incomes therefrom was direct tax aHd that the members of the constitutional con- vention had them in mind as a subject of direct tax when they used that term. He took that, he said, not from any thing that had bee said by Justice Pat terson or anybody else in an effort to limit or prescribe the meaning of the constitution. but from the generally and universally acknowledged consent of mankind then and now. There had been three periods of direct taxation in 1T92, when trouble with France was apprehended; during the war of 1872; and in the war of the Rebellion. The first was emblemtic of them all-it was a direct tax upon real estate, not naked land, as MT. Carter had contended, but upon houses and lands, productive and unproductive alike.
 The second proposition which Mir Choate advanced was that a tax upon rents from real estate was indistin- guishable from a tax on the real prop erty itself. He had understood the learned attorney general yesterday to say, no; that rent after 1t got into mans pocket was money, and that it was that which was taxed. The law proposed to tax rents as personal and not as real estate. But how could anyone pay the tax upon land. He put the question, he said. as applied to the practical ordinary affairs of life, of which the court was bound to take knowledge except as he paid it from the retals. The owner could not take a piece of the land and give it to the govern nent as an equivalent for the tax. 'ls there any difference then" he asked, "between a tax on land and a tax on the rents therefrom An tax upon real estate, MT. Choate said, the constitution for oade; could such a tax be laid upon the 'ents or income thereof? No one would say that such a law could be main- aimed. tax upoc land being for oidden, congress could not wipe out he value of the land by a tax upon he income therefrom for a period of years. we have been lawyers all our Ives" said MT. Choate, land have fol- | owed scores of general tions in consid- | ring the difference between land and | he rent or profit thereon We have | ound it to be an intangible and in sensible thing"
 Illustrating this, he quoted Coke upon | -ittleton, which, he said, had been the | aw in all English Christendom ever ince, that when a land owner grants | he profits of his lands to another the | ee to the land itself passes, for what | s land but the profit thereon? The at orney general had said that the law axed rents as personal property and lot as real. If that were so 1t would | till need to be apportioned among the tates, according to population, to be ffective; but the law assessed a tax n rents as such and not as personal | roperty. He quoted numerous decis- ons by the supreme court of the United tates itself. that tax upon the profits rising from a certain business or thing vas tax upon the business or thing tselft Therefore, he said, he submitted