Mr. Justice Field's Opinion.

According to the census reports the bonds and securities of the States amount to the sum of $1,243,268,000, on which the income or interest exceeds the sum of $65,000,000 per annum, and the annual tax of two per cent upon this income or interest would be $1,300,000.

The law of Congress is also invalid in that it authorizes a tax upon the salaries of the judges of the courts of the United States, against the declaration of the Constitution that their compensation shall not be diminished during their continuance in office. The law declares that a tax of two per cent shall be assessed, levied, and collected and paid annually upon the gains, profits, and income received in the preceding calendar year, by every citizen of the United States, whether said gains, profits, or income be derived from any kind of property, rents, interest, dividends, or salaries, or from any profession, trade, employment, or vocation, carried on within the United States or elsewhere, or from any source whatever. The annual salary of a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States is ten thousand dollars, and this act levies a tax of two per cent on six thousand dollars of this amount, and imposes a penalty upon those who do not make the payment, or return the amount for taxation.

The same objection, as presented to a consideration of the objection to the taxation of the bonds and securities of the States, as not being specially taken in the cases before us, is urged here to a consideration of the objection to the taxation by the law of the salaries of the judges of the courts of the United States. The answer given to that objection may be also given to the present one. The law of Congress being of a public nature, affecting the interests of the whole community, and attacked for its unconstitutionality in certain particulars, may be considered with reference to other unconstitutional provisions called to our attention upon examining the law, though not specifically noticed in the objections taken in the records or briefs of counsel, that the Constitution may not be violated from the carelessness or oversight of counsel in any particular. See O'Neil v. Vermont, 144 U. S. 323, 359.

Besides, there is a duty which this court owes to the one

Mr. Justice Field's Opinion.

hundred other United States judges who have small salaries, and who having their compensation reduced by the tax may be seriously affected by the law.

The Constitution of the United States provides in the first section of article III that: "The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The judges, both of the Supreme and inferior courts, shall hold their offices during good behavior, and shall, at stated times, receive for their services, a compensation, which shall not be diminished during their continuance in office." The act of Congress under discussion imposes, as said, a tax on six thousand dollars of this compensation, and therefore diminishes, each year, the compensation provided for every justice. How a similar law of Congress was regarded thirty years ago may be shown by the following incident in which the justices of this court were assessed at three per cent upon their salaries. Against this Chief Justice Taney protested in a letter to Mr. Chase, then Secretary of the Treasury, appealing to the above article in the Constitution, and adding: "If it [his salary] can be diminished to that extent by the means of a tax, it may, in the same way, be reduced from time to time, at the pleasure of the legislature." He explained in his letter the object of the constitutional inhibition thus:

"The judiciary is one of the three great departments of the government created and established by the Constitution. Its duties and powers are specifically set forth, and are of a character that require it to be perfectly independent of the other departments. And in order to place it beyond the reach, and above even the suspicion, of any such influence, the power to reduce their compensation is expressly withheld from Congress and excepted from their powers of legislation.

"Language could not be more plain than that used in the Constitution. It is, moreover, one of its most important and essential provisions. For the articles which limit the powers of the legislative and executive branches of the government, and those which provide safeguards for the protection of the citizen in his person and property, would be of little value

Mr. Justice Field's Opinion.

without a judiciary to uphold and maintain them which was free from every influence, direct or indirect, that might by possibility, in times of political excitement, warp their judg

ment.

"Upon these grounds I regard an act of Congress retaining in the Treasury a portion of the compensation of the judges as unconstitutional and void."

This letter of Chief Justice Taney was addressed to Mr. Chase, then Secretary of the Treasury and afterwards the successor of Mr. Taney as Chief Justice. It was dated February 16, 1863, but as no notice was taken of it, on the 10th of March following, at the request of the Chief Justice, the Court ordered that his letter to the Secretary of the Treasury be entered on the records of the court, and it was so entered. See Appendix, post, 701. And in the Memoir of the Chief Justice it is stated that the letter was, by this order, preserved "to testify to future ages that in war, no less than in peace, Chief Justice Taney strove to protect the Constitution from violation."

Subsequently, in 1869, and during the administration of President Grant, when Mr. Boutwell was Secretary of the Treasury and Mr. Hoar, of Massachusetts, was Attorney General, there were in several of the statutes of the United States, for the assessment and collection of internal revenue, provisions for taxing the salaries of all civil officers of the United States, which included, in their literal application, the salaries of the President and of the judges of the United States. The question arose whether the law which imposed such a tax upon them was constitutional. The opinion of the Attorney General thereon was requested by the Secretary of the Treasury. The Attorney General, in reply, gave an elaborate opinion advising the Secretary of the Treasury that no income tax could be lawfully assessed and collected upon the salaries of those officers who were in office at the time the statute imposing the tax was passed, holding on this subject the views expressed by Chief Justice Taney. His opinion is published in volume XIII of the Opinions of the Attorneys General, at page 161. I am informed that it has been fol

Mr. Justice Field's Opinion.

lowed ever since without question by the department supervising or directing the collection of the public revenue.

Here I close my opinion. I could not say less in view of questions of such gravity that go down to the very foundation of the government. If the provisions of the Constitution can be set aside by an act of Congress, where is the course of usurpation to end? The present assault upon capital is but the beginning. It will be but the stepping-stone to others, larger and more sweeping, till our political contests will become a war of the poor against the rich; a war constantly growing in intensity and bitterness.

"If the court sanctions the power of discriminating taxation, and nullifies the uniformity mandate of the Constitution," as said by one who has been all his life a student of our institutions, "it will mark the hour when the sure decadence of our present government will commence." If the purely arbitrary limitation of $4000 in the present law can be sustained, none having less than that amount of income being assessed or taxed for the support of the government, the limitation of future Congresses may be fixed at a much larger sum, at five or ten or twenty thousand dollars, parties possessing an income of that amount alone being bound to bear the burdens of government; or the limitation may be designated at such an amount as a board of "walking delegates" may deem necessary. There is no safety in allowing the limitation to be adjusted except in strict compliance with the mandates of the Constitution which require its taxation, if imposed by direct taxes, to be apportioned among the States according to their representation, and if imposed by indirect taxes, to be uniform in operation and, so far as practicable, in proportion to their property, equal upon all citizens. Unless the rule of the Constitution governs, a majority may fix the limitation at such rate as will not include any of their own number.

I am of opinion that the whole law of 1894 should be declared void and without any binding force that part which relates to the tax on the rents, profits or income from real estate, that is, so much as constitutes part of the direct tax, because, not imposed by the rule of apportionment according

Dissenting Opinion: White, Harlan, JJ.

to the representation of the States, as prescribed by the Constitution and that part which imposes a tax upon the bonds and securities of the several States, and upon the bonds and securities of their municipal bodies, and upon the salaries of judges of the courts of the United States, as being beyond the power of Congress; and that part which lays duties, imposts, and excises, as void in not providing for the uniformity required by the Constitution in such cases.

MR. JUSTICE WHITE, with whom concurred MR. JUSTICE HARLAN, dissenting.

My brief judicial experience has convinced me that the custom of filing long dissenting opinions is one "more honored in the breach than in the observance." The only purpose which an elaborate dissent can accomplish, if any, is to weaken the effect of the opinion of the majority, and thus engender want of confidence in the conclusions of courts of last resort. This consideration would impel me to content myself with simply recording my dissent in the present case, were it not for the fact that I consider that the result of the opinion of the court just announced is to overthrow a long and consistent line of decisions, and to deny to the legislative department of the government the possession of a power conceded to it by universal consensus for one hundred years, and which has been recognized by repeated adjudications of this The issues presented are as follows:

court.

Complainant, as a stockholder in a corporation, avers that the latter will voluntarily pay the income tax, levied under the recent act of Congress; that such tax is unconstitutional; and that its voluntary payment will seriously affect his interest by defeating his right to test the validity of the exaction, and also lead to a multiplicity of suits against the corporation. The prayer of the bill is as follows: First. That it may be decreed that the provisions known as "The Income Tax Law," incorporated in the act of Congress, passed August 15, 1894, are unconstitutional, null, and void. Second. That the defendant be restrained from voluntarily complying with the provisions of that act by making its returns and statements,