The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-03-13
and conditions which it would be folly

The attorney general spoke not quite
 ari hour and was followed by Hon. | James c. Carter, who was the last | speaker in the argument to support
 the tax He stated in the outset that he appeared for the Continental Trust company, which had instructed him to admit and plead the constltutionality
 of the law. That was admitted i'm the
 demurrer to the complaint of MT.
 Hyde, it's stockholder, and was ad-
 mitted outside the demurrer.
 | This corporation, said MT. Carter
 was one of those wealthy concerns
 which might be supposed to be ad- versely affected by the operation of the | law. But he was glad to be able to believe that there were some wealthy
 men who were ready and willing to come forward and contribute the pro- portion of the revenues of the govern
 ment, which was their obligation.
 MT. Carter devoted some time to a
 humorous, semi-sarcastie review of the
 propositions advanced by Mir Edmunds.
 He said that when that master hand
 swept over the strings, the true melody
 of the piece came out and he was
 not disappointed to find that the topics
 suggested to the court for its consid-
 eration were political economy, sociol-
 ogy and general legislative discretion.
 Proper enough they may be for dis
 cussion before a legislative assembly,
 but what would a judicial tribune do
 with them?
 MT. Carter said he would not have introduced these topics of political economy; but they having been pre- scented, he would present some views in relation to the general subject. The proper rule for taxation, he said, was that it should be laid win regard to the taxpayers ability to pay the tax And that ability was not to be deter mined by the amount of property he has, but by how much he had to spend If i'm laying the tax the legislature should make mistakes, the remedy did not lie In an appeal to the judiciary. This court" MT Carter said, lis not the only depositary of the rights and privileges of the people. The great trustees thereof are congress and the legislature of the several statds"
 MT, Carter expressed his regret that the people had not sent better men to the late congress, but asked how it could be helped If the result was de- lection in the quality of legislation, which I do not believe, at least" he said with an air that eonVulsed the court and spectators with laughter, "I am not one to state that belief here" The people must take the consequence of their choice of members of congress Mir. Edmunds, said Mir Carter, believed that there was a plan of relief by call hn ft,lr oe t,, revise the work of congress. He could | not agree with his learned friend in the expediency or desirablllty of the plan. | There was no certainty, wRthiall defer l ence, he said, that the legislative duties would be better done, if they were as surned by the court The policy of | in the imposition of taxes for centuries had been governed by the of cheapness, ease and ef- in it's collection.
 Human nature was so constituted that | 1t endeavored to throw off burden 1t | could escape, This gave rise to con tests between the rich and the poor and in all such contests the poor would go to the wall. We had i heard in this argument that the rich were the class who needed protection from the taxing power but it was not 90. Before the income tax was enacted the government had some $500, 900 900 a year for it's expenditures, three-ffths of which came from lmpost duties These Mir, Edmunds said had not been con trlbuted in any great amount by the poor, but Senator John sherman had de- ,lared that the poor paid nine-tenths of them. The agitation in behalf of the poor people in this regard led to polit- cal revolution which In fact, however, resulted in the maintenance of this gi- gantlc scheme of injustice practically unchanged, but modified or moderated Q the extent of from thirty to fifty millions of taxes to be collected from the Tealthier portion of the community.
 Proceeding then to consider the con- stitutional questions involved in the ,ase Mir. Carter said it was claimed that he law was unconstitutional because tn income tax was a direct tax.
 ''Is that an open question:" he asked. The court had said that it was liable Q err and they were bound to believe t, and he would not for a moment ar gue that a wrongful decision should lot be reversed. He believed that noth- ng was ever settled in this country intil it was settled right, but it was necessary to guard against the creep ng of error into the new decision. The ourt was asked to reconsider it's decis- on in this case in order that rich men night escape from paying taxes assess d against them. Was that proper nd for which the court should overturn | ' . long series of decisions extending over ( century? g Direct taxes MT. Carter argued, were hose that could be equally apportioned | mong the states. It had been suggest i d that it meant something more and 2 he court was asked to infer that some l hing more for the purpose of limiting g he exercise by congress of the taxing C ower Congress, MT. Carter said was ot authorized to arbitrarily exercise he taxing power. The power was such
 sue as everybody would concede was f