Constitutional history -- United States -- Sources; Constitutional law -- United States
Many spectres have been raised out of this power of internal taxation,
to excite the apprehensions of the people: double sets of revenue
officers, a duplication of their burdens by double taxations, and the
frightful forms of odious and oppressive poll-taxes, have been played
off with all the ingenious dexterity of political legerdemain.
As to the first point, there are two cases in which there can be no
room for double sets of officers: one, where the right of imposing the
tax is exclusively vested in the Union, which applies to the duties on
imports; the other, where the object has not fallen under any State
regulation or provision, which may be applicable to a variety of
objects. In other cases, the probability is that the United States will
either wholly abstain from the objects preoccupied for local purposes,
or will make use of the State officers and State regulations for
collecting the additional imposition. This will best answer the views
of revenue, because it will save expense in the collection, and will
best avoid any occasion of disgust to the State governments and to the
people. At all events, here is a practicable expedient for avoiding
such an inconvenience; and nothing more can be required than to show
that evils predicted to not necessarily result from the plan.
As to any argument derived from a supposed system of influence, it is a
sufficient answer to say that it ought not to be presumed; but the
supposition is susceptible of a more precise answer. If such a spirit
should infest the councils of the Union, the most certain road to the
accomplishment of its aim would be to employ the State officers as much
as possible, and to attach them to the Union by an accumulation of
their emoluments. This would serve to turn the tide of State influence
into the channels of the national government, instead of making federal
influence flow in an opposite and adverse current. But all suppositions
of this kind are invidious, and ought to be banished from the
consideration of the great question before the people. They can answer
no other end than to cast a mist over the truth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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