Taxes can only be levied, and collected, for public purposes; but all the property of the country can be taxed to its entire value, when the public good requires it. The exigency demanding high rates of taxation is left to the determination of the legislatures of the states, and of the general government. No taxes can be legally levied or collected save for the support of the government, state and national, and subject to the restrictions incorporated in the constitution. All other taxes imposed upon the people are unconstitutional, illegal, and oppressive, and should be declared absolutely void. Direct taxation, for the support of the general government, has never been practiced in time of peace. The usual method for raising a sufficient revenue for its support has been by duties, or tariff imposed by acts of congress upon imports. This has always been deemed the best method for raising the revenue necessary for the support of the government. The powers and duties of the general government are limited and restricted by the constitution of the United States; and as its legislative, executive, and judicial powers are thus limited, it follows that its power to impose taxes upon the people is limited in the same manner, and that it can tax for no purpose save for defraying the expenses of its different departments in the exercise of the powers delegated by the federal constitution. This conceded, all that can be claimed by those who administer the affairs of the nation, unless they transcend the constitutional limit, is conceded. The power to appropriate the lands or money of the public to private parties or corporations not being found in the constitution, nor implied in any of the granted powers, all such appropriations are usurpations; they are donations of the people's money and property to private corporations and individuals in violation of the constitutional restrictions; and no authority is vested in congress to tax the people, either directly or indirectly, for the purpose of making return of the money and property thus wrongfully taken from them. A private corporation is not a public necessity; its franchises are private property, and even if the United States owned the whole of its stock, and took the entire control of its business, it could not become a public corporation, for the reason that congress does not possess the power, under the constitution, to create private corporations. The fact that the United States owned the stock and controlled the corporation would not impart to it any of the attributes of sovereignty, but in so far as the general government was interested in the corporation, it would be treated as any other private party, and would be amenable to the same law and subject to the same jurisdiction as private parties or individuals. If the action of the general government can confer none of the attributes of sovereignty upon a private corporation--if it has no constitutional authority to donate