ple. They have the power, if they choose to exercise it, to repeal every law on the statute books or to enact any new law, limited only by a Constitution which they have the power to amend. There is, in truth, no limit to the power of the people in free America under our form of government. The sun never rose on another people so blessed with power or so freighted with responsibility.

For forty-one years the Constitution as it now reads has stood with no sustained effort on the part of Congress or the people to further amend it. But at the last session of Congress a joint resolution was introduced and passed, receiving every vote in the United States Senate and all but fourteen votes in the House of Representatives, proposing the Sixteenth Amendment.

It reads:

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Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes on incomes from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States and without regard to any census or enumeration."

The question presented is, Should this amendment be ratified by the States? I hold the affirmative of the proposition. My conviction is unalterable that the safety of the Nation may depend on the power conferred by this amendment. Its ratification is therefore imperative.

In the first place, the issue does not raise a question of party politics. On the record, the two great political parties of the country stand in favor of the amendment. One indorsed it in its last National platform, and both indorsed it by voting for the joint resolution in the last Congress.

This amendment should receive the support of every man who believes as an economic policy that the incomes of the country should at all times bear a share of the burdens of government. It should also have the support of those who do not believe in that economic policy in times of peace because other forms of taxation fail in times of war.

No patriotic citizen can deny his country in distress this source of revenue even if he would do so in times of peace and quiet. As the Constitution reads to-day under the last interpretation of the Supreme Court, our Government is without power to tax incomes directly, no matter what the need or how great the necessity.

Section 8 of Article I provides that Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises. This provision of Section 8 is modified by another provision of Section 9 of the same article, which reads:

"No capitation or other direct tax shall be laid unless in proportion to the census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken."

From these provisions it is clear that the framers of the Constitution intended that the revenues with which to run the Government should be raised by custom duties, excises, and imposts, and not by direct taxation. For it is obvious to the casual student that to levy direct taxes on either lands or incomes in proportion to the population of the States would work such inequality and gross injustice as to render the tax intolerable and, as Supreme Justice Brown said, "impossible."

During all the years of the country's history no continued effort has been made to lay and collect taxes on any kind of property, real or personal, apportioned according to population. However, at different times in our history Congress has undertaken to tax incomes. Congress acted on the theory that a tax on incomes was not a direct tax, and therefore need not be laid with regard to apportionment among the States according to population as provided in Section 9.

From the beginning every law seeking to lay an income tax has been assailed in the courts. Beginning with the Hylton case in 1789, reported in 3 Dallas, 171, and ending with the Springer case in 1880, reported in 102 U. S., 586,

the Supreme Court continuously and consistently held such a law Constitutional. The opinion of the Court in these cases rested on the proposition that a tax on incomes was not a direct tax, and was therefore not inhibited by the Constitution. It will be recalled that the Springer case involved the validity of an act of Congress passed during the Rebellion. The Union was broken in credit and the Government at Washington was selling its bonds at a heavy discount. The National currency had depreciated and the Union was in urgent need of money with which to provide the Union forces with maintenance and equipment. The life of the Union was at stake.

Congress had exhausted every resource except a tax on incomes. It was in obedience to the cry of the country's distress that Lincoln asked Congress to furnish the necessary funds by laying a tax on incomes. The law was passed; millions of dollars were collected under it at a time when the Government vitally needed the money. Springer assailed the constitutionality of the law. After full argument and mature consideration, the Court sustained the law, and Springer's homestead was sold by the marshal for the collection of the tax. In so deciding the Court followed the decision in the Hylton case, which involved the same principle.

So we find that the uniform and uninterrupted interpretation of the Constitution by the Court had sustained the power of Congress to lay and collect taxes on incomes for nearly a century. But in 1895 the Supreme Court was called upon to pass for the third time on the same question. The income tax law of 1864 had been repealed and a new statute restoring the tax had been enacted in 1894. A suit was brought to determine the validity of the 1894 statute on the subject. It is known as the Pollock case, and is reported in 157 U. S., 429.

This suit involved the identical principle decided in the

Hylton and Springer cases. It was argued with marked ability by distinguished lawyers on its first submission to the Court, and again at great length on the rehearing. The Attorney-General of the United States, Richard Olney, of Massachusetts, appeared with other great lawyers in behalf of the Constitutional power of Congress to tax incomes. The decision of the Court, however, in effect reversed the holding in the Hylton and Springer cases and held the law unconstitutional. The Court put the reversal on the ground that a tax on incomes was a direct tax, and unless apportioned according to population could not be collected.

It is idle to discuss whether the last decision of the Supreme Court on this question was right or wrong. Such a decision would avail nothing, because, right or wrong, the decision of the Supreme Court, under our form of government, stands as the law of the land. It binds every citizen. It cannot be ignored either by the people or Congress.

In this case the judgment of the Court was that Congress had no power to tax incomes. Surely Congress would not be justified in passing another law of the same character and import in the face of that judgment, at least not without at the same time making an effort to amend the Constitution so as to confer on Congress such power. And if it did so, the people would have a right to question its good faith. Who contends that Congress should ever do what the Supreme Court of the United States holds it cannot do? The strength of our form of government lies in the plan of its distribution of powers, legislative, executive, and judicial-the three co-ordinate branches of government— each supreme in its field. Under this plan the power of the judiciary is supreme in determining the constitutionality of a law. Under this plan the legislative branch is supreme in determining what laws shall be enacted in the first instance; but when enacted, it is wholly and

exclusively within the power of the judiciary to interpret and construe them; to sustain or set them aside, if in the judgment of the Court they contravene any of the provisions of the Constitution.

The Court having been clothed by the people with authority under the Constitution to say what Congress can or cannot do, and having spoken on the subject, the people are driven to amend the Constitution, the only remedy they have.

The people demand the ratification of the amendment, in the first place, because they insist that their Government shall have all the rights, powers, and prerogatives as a Government that are enjoyed by every other sovereign nation. The power of taxation-a power exercised by every full-grown government-is a sovereign attribute. If the right to tax incomes is denied, the right of taxation is impaired. No nation could exist for any length of time if the power of taxation is taken entirely away. If it is partly taken away, its life is jeopardized that far. The purpose of this amendment is to restore beyond dispute that power. This Republic should be a Nation shorn of no attribute nor prerogative incident to National sovereignty.

There is another reason why the amendment should be ratified. No man can tell how soon this country may be in need of the revenue which could be obtained only by a tax on incomes. We have learned from experience that at one time at least in this country the Nation depended on an income tax for its life. While to-day there may be no such emergency, we have no assurance that it may not again arise. Should it ever come, who cares to be responsible for withholding a power from the Government which may be necessary for its existence?

Should we have a foreign war, our revenue, now raised chiefly from revenue duties, would inevitably cease, or at