Constitutional history -- United States -- Sources; Constitutional law -- United States
As to a supposition of repugnancy between the power of taxation in the
States and in the Union, it cannot be supported in that sense which
would be requisite to work an exclusion of the States. It is, indeed,
possible that a tax might be laid on a particular article by a State
which might render it INEXPEDIENT that thus a further tax should be
laid on the same article by the Union; but it would not imply a
constitutional inability to impose a further tax. The quantity of the
imposition, the expediency or inexpediency of an increase on either
side, would be mutually questions of prudence; but there would be
involved no direct contradiction of power. The particular policy of the
national and of the State systems of finance might now and then not
exactly coincide, and might require reciprocal forbearances. It is not,
however a mere possibility of inconvenience in the exercise of powers,
but an immediate constitutional repugnancy that can by implication
alienate and extinguish a pre-existing right of sovereignty.
The necessity of a concurrent jurisdiction in certain cases results
from the division of the sovereign power; and the rule that all
authorities, of which the States are not explicitly divested in favor
of the Union, remain with them in full vigor, is not a theoretical
consequence of that division, but is clearly admitted by the whole
tenor of the instrument which contains the articles of the proposed
Constitution. We there find that, notwithstanding the affirmative
grants of general authorities, there has been the most pointed care in
those cases where it was deemed improper that the like authorities
should reside in the States, to insert negative clauses prohibiting the
exercise of them by the States. The tenth section of the first article
consists altogether of such provisions. This circumstance is a clear
indication of the sense of the convention, and furnishes a rule of
interpretation out of the body of the act, which justifies the position
I have advanced and refutes every hypothesis to the contrary.
PUBLIUS.
THE FEDERALIST.
No. XXXIII.
The Same Subject Continued
(Concerning the General Power of Taxation)
From the Daily Advertiser.
January 3, 1788.
HAMILTON
To the People of the State of New York:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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