University of Virginia Library

Not Function of National Government.

This idea that the Federal Government is something like the Government
of the Russias, or some other imperial government, in which
the people are subjects, beneficiaries, supplicants, and mendicants,
who beg and plead as if some great father would be persuaded to
scatter his resources with generous hand and give to the people
something apparently not belonging to them is a new and unheard-of
and astonishing doctrine in our land. Mr. Chairman, why not charge
the Federal Government for the privilege of conducting Federal
troops over country roads and through city streets? If the Federal

Government is annoying or unkind or illiberal, why not tax it out
of existence? It would be simple for the people to punish the Government
by imposing burdens it could not bear. Under the Constitution
exclusive jurisdiction is placed in the Congress over all
places purchased by the consent of the legislatures of the States
required for forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful
buildings. Under section 355 of the Revised Statutes no money
can be expended upon any site or land for the erection of any public
building, fortification, or similar work unless the consent of the
State is first obtained to the acquisition of the property. Why not
abandon the policy heretofore followed and consent that the Federal
Government shall pay taxes upon its Federal buildings, taxes upon
the land occupied for fortifications, and other public purposes? It
is the same principle underlying this bill carried to the logical conclusion.
It is something new and novel. It is merely a cloak or a
cover to get the hands of the various localities into the Federal
Treasury.

People shut their eyes and dream that the money they take is
to be obtained from some place else than from their own pockets,
but it will come from there eventually and no other place. There
seems to be a widespread notion that the resources of the Federal
Government are boundless, that the Treasury is overflowing. The
methods by which the Federal Government obtains money are indirect
and remote from the people. Its gathering hand is invisible;
yet it takes its mite from every article, from every commodity that
is of use to the people. It may be difficult to trace the tax; that
makes some people the more ready to have it imposed. To enter
this new policy means additional taxes, additional burdens, It is
futile to talk of reducing taxation, of relieving the people from grievous
burdens, of reducing the cost of living, if at every turn we are
to be confronted with some new scheme to filch money from the
Federal Treasury.