If congress had laid a prohibitory tax upon all food--that is, had imposed a penalty upon the production and sale of all food--except such as it should have itself produced, or specially licensed; and should have reduced the amount of food, thus produced or licensed, to one tenth, twentieth, or fiftieth of what was really needed; the motive and the crime would have been the same, in character, if not in degree, as they are in this case, _viz._, to enable the few holders of the licensed food to extort, from everybody else, by the fear of starvation, all their (the latter's) earnings and property, in exchange for this small quantity of privileged food. Such a monopoly of food would have been no clearer violation of men's natural rights, than is the present monopoly of money. And yet this colossal crime--like every other crime that congress chooses to commit--is sanctioned by its servile, rotten, and stinking court. On what _constitutional_ grounds--that is, on what provisions found in the constitution itself--does the court profess to give its sanction to such a crime? On these three only: 1. On the power of congress to lay and collect taxes, etc. 2. On the power of congress to coin money. 3. On the power of congress to borrow money. Out of these simple, and apparently harmless provisions, the court manufactures an authority to grant, to a few persons, a monopoly that is practically omnipotent over all the industry and traffic of the country; that is fatal to all other men's natural right to lend and hire capital for any or all their legitimate industries; and fatal absolutely to all their natural right to buy, sell, and exchange any, or all, the products of their labor at their true, just, and natural prices. Let us look at these constitutional provisions, and see how much authority congress can really draw from them. 1. The constitution says: The congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, _to pay the debts, and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States_. This provision plainly authorizes no taxation whatever, except for the raising of revenue to pay the debts and legitimate expenses of the government. It no more authorizes taxation for the purpose of establishing monopolies of any kind whatever, than it does for taking openly and boldly all the property of the many, and giving it outright to a few. And none but a congress of usurpers, robbers, and swindlers would ever think of using it for that purpose. The court says, _in effect_, that this provision gives congress power to establish the present monopoly of money; that the power to tax all other money, is a power to prohibit all other money; and a power to prohibit all other money is a power to give the present money a monopoly. How much is such an argument worth? Let us show by a parallel case, as follows.