the capacity to deal with all persons and property in our Territories as it may see fit. The issue raised by the committee is not, Does the constitution govern Porto Rico, but does it govern us? Believing that absolute power was never intended to be given by the framers of the constitution; that it is contrary to the whole spirit of that instrument; that it is contrary, also, to its specific terms, and that a long and unbroken line of decisions of our supreme court are directly against this assertion of power, I feel myelf constrained to oppose this bill.

A great deal has been said about the meaning of the term "United States " in the constitution, and it seems to me much irrelevant learning has been expended in the discussion of that question. It is evident that the term could have been employed in any one of three different senses according to the context-one as expressing simple sovereignty and the national name, another as referring to the individual States composing the Union, and the third referring to the empire or territory over which the new sovereignty was to have sway.

It will require no very ample learning, it seems to me, in our history before the formation of the constitution to enable one to see that the term might have been used in any of these three senses. There is another and broader sense in which the term is used since the great war of the rebellion. Some of the old views of the constitution were totally overthrown by that great convulsion. The close-corporation theory, the idea that our government rested simply upon the States as units, and that the term "United States," in the political sense, meant simply the States composing the Union, it seems to me, gave way then to the broader doctrine that the government of the United States rests not in the States but in the

people as a whole, a new body politic created by the constitution.

But, sir, this is no question of mere syntax. What are the vital points? The Revolution was started and fought to a successful conclusion upon the broad principle that one community had no right permanently to levy taxes upon another community. That was the underlying idea which led to the establishment of this government. The power to tax is the very essence of the power to enslave. The right to take a portion of the proceeds of a man's toil by an unlimited power of taxation necessarily involves the right to take them all. This idea, I say, underlies the foundation of our govern

ment.

And what more than any other motive led to the abandonment of the old Articles of Confederation and the adoption of our constitution? Was it not the desire to do Was it not the desire to do away with the local toll-gates that had been set up upon the frontiers of each State and to break down the local barriers upon commerce, so that trade might be carried on unfettered throughout the dominion of the United States? The two things, then, that we should expect to find guarded in the constitution, and the two things with reference to which we should most strictly construe all its terms, are, first, the right to tax, and, second, the right to set up again local barriers against trade within our dominion which the constitution was erected to throw down.

Now, I do not propose to consume the time of the House with any elaborate review of the condition of our public lands, or of any other portions of our history prior to the adoption of the constitution than those to which I have alluded, but I come to the direct issue involved by this bill. Section 8 of the first article of the constitution is as follows:

"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; but all duties, imposts, and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States."

Here is the power of taxation specifically given, and in the very section which gives the power the method of its exercise is as distinctly marked out. The power and the method granted in the same breath are coextensive, and wherever Congress has the power to lay and collect duties, imposts, and excises it must lay and collect them uniformly. This would seem to be in accordance with the most natural and simple meaning of the words. Certainly the term "United States" in the uniformity clause does not mean mere sovereignty. It undoubtedly refers to territory, to the places over which this dominion or power is to be exercised.

If we were in any doubt as to the meaning of the words, then I submit that we should solve those doubts in the light of those two great ideas to which I have referred, the one of which caused the Revolution and the other of which led to the adoption of the constitution. We should give that clause the strictest construction and interpret it in case of doubt against the power to tax and against the power to set up local barriers.

But we are not without further light. This very clause has been construed by the great arbiter set up by the constitution for the final settlement of all constitutional and other legal questions. I shall quote now from the case of Loughborough vs. Blake, in which John Marshall, as great a jurist as ever sat upon any bench, rendered the decision of the

court:

"The power to lay and collect duties, imposts, and excises may be exercised and must be exercised throughout the United States. Does this term designate the whole or any part of the American empire? Certainly this question can admit of but one answer. It is the name given to our great Republic, which is composed of States and Territories. The District of Columbia or the territory west of the Missouri is not less within the United States than Maryland or Pennsylvania, and it is not less necessary, on the principles of our constitution, that uniformity in the imposition of imposts, duties, and excises shall be observed in the one than the other."

There could not be a more explicit construction placed upon the meaning of any words. This opinion unequivocally holds that the expression "United States " in the clause providing for uniformity of duties, excises, and imposts means the whole American empire and includes the Territories as well as the States. But it is discovered that this expression of opinion is obiter dictum, and a good dead of ingenuity has been expended in support of the proposition that the principle which John Marshall put in the forefront of that decision was not the principle upon which the case should have been decided. A reading of the case, however, will convince anyone that it might well have been put upon that principle, and the fact that it was put upon it is some evidence that the court considered the question and thought that it was material to the decision.

A modern school of jurists-so modern that they have only appeared within our body politic during the last eighteen months-have discovered that the District of Columbia, the constitutional status of which was involved in the case of Loughborough vs. Blake, was under the constitution while it was a part of a State, and by its subsequent cession it did not lose that status. In other words, although the constitu

tion itself provided for the carving out and cession of just such a district somewhere, in some way when the specific cession of the territory actually occurred the constitution which had been adopted by the State from which it was separated ran with this territory like a covenant running with the land. All I have to say, Mr. Chairman, upon this proposition is that so far as I can discover it never has occurred to the mind of any justice of our supreme court in the long line of decisions that have been rendered upon the constitutional status of the District of Columbia. The utmost that can be shown by it is the obtuseness of the men who have adorned that bench, although it is barely possible that the point was so small and trivial and insignificant as to be beneath the attention of those great minds.

If the opinion which John Marshall expressed for himself and his associates upon that bench were a mere obiter dictum, it would still be entitled to great weight and respect in any tribunal in the world, but it was not obiter dictum. It is clear that the principle was from the view the court took of the case involved in the decision. John Marshall enunciated principles. His mind had a wider range than that of the modern police court justice whose intellectual processes it is now sought to impose upon that great man.

This is one unequivocal opinion by the supreme court that the principle involved in the bill presented by the majority of the Committee on Ways and Means is in violation of the constitution which every member here has taken an oath to observe, protect, and defend. But this specific clause of the constitution has again been considered by the Supreme Court of the United States, and the meaning of the term "United States" in the uniformity clause has again been construed. I refer now to the case of Cross vs. Harrison (16 Howard,