It certainly is no tax, because no revenue is raised, or intended to be raised, by it. It is not levied upon property, or persons, as such, but only upon a certain act, or upon persons for doing a certain act; an act that if not only perfectly innocent and lawful in itself, but that is naturally and intrinsically useful, and even indispensable for the prosperity and welfare of the whole people. Its whole object is simply to deter everybody--except those specially licensed--from performing this innocent, useful, and necessary act. And this it has succeeded in doing for the last twenty years; to the destruction of the rights, and the impoverishment and immeasurable injury of all the people, except the few holders of the monopoly. If congress had passed an act, in this form, to wit: No person, nor any association of persons, incorporated or unincorporated--_unless specially licensed by congress_--shall issue their promissory notes for circulation as money; and a _penalty_ of ten per cent. upon the amount of all such notes shall be imposed upon the persons issuing them, the act would have been the same, in effect and intention, as is this act, that imposes what it calls a "tax." The penalty would have been understood by everybody as a punishment for issuing the notes; and would have been applied to, and enforced against, those only who should have issued them. And it is the same with this so-called tax. It will never be collected, except for the same cause, and under the same circumstances, as the penalty would have been. It has no more to do with raising a revenue, than the penalty would have had. And all these lying lawmakers and courts know it. But if congress had put this prohibition distinctly in the form of a _penalty_, the usurpation would have been so barefaced--so destitute of all color of constitutional authority--that congress dared not risk the consequences. And possibly the court might not have dared to sanction it; if, indeed, there be any crime or usurpation which the court dare not sanction. So these knavish lawmakers called this penalty a "tax"; and the court says that such a "tax" is clearly constitutional. And the monopoly has now been established for twenty years. And substantially all the industrial and financial troubles of that period have been the natural consequences of the monopoly.