of taxation as might be practicable and consistent with its main purpose to ensure the equal distribution of the burden imposed for a common benefit upon the States which were the primary object of consideration, but to find the same protection extended wherever that burden might be imposed; that is to say, throughout the whole length and breadth of the land.

And this expectation would be strengthened by the recollection that a guaranty of such protection had just been granted by the confederation to the few and scattered inhabitants of those parts of the United States which were not within any of the States (Northwest Ordinance, Art. IV).

But what was the peculiar form of oppression in the exercise of the taxing power to be feared and guarded against?

Not that which would lay a heavier hand upon one class in the community than upon another. Our fathers had not experienced it, and under a representative government had little reason to dread it.

It was not this, but the danger of an unjust inequality in the distribution of the burden between the different parts of the country that they had occasion to dread, and it is accordingly against inequality of this sort that we should expect them to provide, upon general principles of right and justice, and in the absence of any special fears or jealousies leading them to do so. That these general considerations entered into their motives we can not doubt; nor can we doubt that they intended that the extent of the protection should coincide with the extent of the power; that the people of the territory of the United States should enjoy it as well as the people of the States.

But there was, as we have said, a special and pressing cause in which these general considerations were concentrated for guarding against local discrimination, especially in indirect taxation. It is so well known; it crops out so constantly in every page of constitutional history that we need hardly do more than allude to it. It lay in the fears and jealousies entertained by the smaller States towards the larger; those fears and jealousies which so nearly strangled our infant nation in the cradle.

"Unless duties, imports, and excises were uniform, the grossest and most oppressive inequalities, vitally affecting the pursuits and employments of the people of different States might exist. The agriculture, commerce, or manufactures of one State might be built up on the ruins of those of another, and a combination of a fer States in Congress might secure a monopoly of certain branches of trade and business to themselves, to the injury, if not to the destruction, of their less favored neighbors. The Constitution throughout all its provisions is an instrument of checks and restraints as well as of powers. It does not rely on confidence in the General Government to preserve the interests of all the States. It is founded in a wholesome and strenuous jealousy which, foreseeing the possibility of mischief, guards with solicitude against any exercise of power which may endanger the States as far as it is practicable. If this provision as to uniformity of duties had been omitted, although the power might never have been abused to the injury of the feebler States of the Union (a presumption which history does not justify us in deeming quite safe or certain), yet it would of itself have been sufficient to demolish in a practi

cal sense the value of most of the other restrictive clauses in the Constitution. New York and Pennsylvania might, by an easy con.bination with the Southern States, have destroyed the whole navigation of New England. A combination of a different character between the New England and the Western States might have borne down the agriculture of the South, and a combination of a yet different character might have struck at the vital interests of manufacturers." (Story on the Constitution, § 957.)

Unless, in speaking of "the Western States," the learned commentator had in mind the States to be formed out of the Northwest Territory he was dwelling in this passage on that which, as we have already conceded, was undoubtedly most prominent in the minds of the framers of the Constitution; that is, the need of guard against the exercise of. the taxing power by States over States, but we must continue to insist that there is no reason for supposing that they did not generalize both their fears and their precautions against them.

In this special instance, indeed, the motives by which they were influenced applied distinctly to the regions not then within the States. The concerted action of which Judge Story speaks would be the more crushing in its effects if the hostile combination of States of which he speaks could throw into the scale against the objects of their hostility the weight of an unequal competition in the Territories. And such concerted action was no more to be dreaded in any other shape than, for instance, in the building up the Northwest Territory through unequal taxation at the expense of its agricultural competitors in the South, and it might in that shape, as well as in others, commend itself to the interests of the manufacturing States. And the same is true of the

other illustrations suggested by Judge Story.

4.

Geographical uniformity.

The desired protection, then, was against local discrimination, not against class discrimination, and that protection against the taxing power we find that the Constitution affords against direct taxation by the rule of apportionment; against indirect taxation where the danger was most imminent by the rule of geographical uniformity.

That the uniformity required by the clause of the Constitution with which we are directly concerned is of this character has recently been decided by this court.

Knowlton v. Moore, 178 U. S., 41.

The court did not have occasion in that case to consider the question directly presented in that at bar. No point there arose or was even suggested as to whether the power of indirect taxation was to be exercised in the territory of the United States as well as within the States, and, so exercised, was to be subjected to the same restrictions there as elsewhere. But the necessities of the case prompted the learned judge who delivered the opinion of the court to a careful and exhaustive review of the situation and needs of the time when the Constitution was adopted, and of the debates upon the subject of taxation in the Continental Congress and in the Federal convention. Neither in the

facts collected nor in the conclusions drawn from them do we find anything but what supports the general statement of principles which we have undertaken to make. It has been our task, however, to show, if we could, that those principles have an extended application to which the attention of the court was not then directed.

The debates in the Continental Congress, for instance, "make it clear that the words uniform throughout the United States' which were afterward inserted in the Constitution of the United States, had, prior to its adoption, been frequently used, and always with reference purely to a geographical uniformity and as synonymous with the expression to operate generally throughout the United States "" (p. 96), but it does not of course follow that when the expression was used in the Constitution, the words "United States" had precisely the same meaning as at the time of the debate in the Continental Congress. In that time, indeed, there was nothing but States to be taxed, and the expression was used indiscriminately without regard to whether the taxes under consideration should be collected by the Confederation or by the States themselves.

And so when the learned judge deduces from his review of the history of the clause in question in the Constitutional Convention that the prominent end in view was the necessity to protect the States against inequality of taxation, we see no reason for supposing that he intended to intimate any denial that wider motives may have been at work, and wider results intended or at least secured in the framing of the clause. An inconsistent motive or result can not of course be assumed; but that which we suggest is not only consistent with but consequent upon the central and primary purpose which he finds in it. When therefore he concludes that the provision in Art. I, § 7, subd. 6, as to preferences between ports and that regarding uniformity of duties, imposts, and excises were one in purpose, one in their adoption (p. 105), he did not, we suppose, intend to suggest, much less to decide, and the latter might not have a broader scope and intention than, having in view the exclusively inland character of the territorial possessions of the United States, it was thought necessary to give to the other. The general resuit of the learned judge's inquiry is merely, to state it in his own words (p. 106), that "the words uniform throughout the United States' do not signify an intrinsic but simply a geographical uniformity.”

5.

The rule of apportionment in the Territories.

The principles which we have suggested, then, are those to which, as we believe, Chief Justice Marshall alluded when he said that uniformity in indirect taxation was "not less necessary, on the principles of the Constitution," in the Territories than in the States. But our conclusions as to indirect taxation will be strengthened if we find that the principle of limiting the power to tax in the Territories was recognized in the instance of direct taxation also.

This point also is decided in Loughborough v. Blake. We need not enlarge this brief by repeating the reasoning by which the Chief Justice reaches his result (5 Wheat., pp. 320-325); it will be enough to quote his general conclusion (325):

"If it be said that the principle of uniformity, established in the Constitution, secures the district from oppression in the imposition of indirect taxes, it is not less true, that the principle of apportionment, also established in the Constitution, secures the district from any oppressive exercise of the power to lay and collect direct taxes."

6.

Meaning of the words "United States" as used in the Constitution.

We now revert from the principles and spirit of the Constitution to its letter, in examining which, if our premises thus far are sound, we should be entitled to cast the burden of proof upon those who assert that the words "throughout the United States" do not refer to “our great Republic, which is composed of States and Territories," but merely to States included in it; but we shall find it easy to sustain the affirmative upon that question, and to show, by an examination of the Constitution itself, as well as by contrasting it with the Articles of Confederation, that the words "United States" are, in it, constantly used in the former sense. In various senses they are used, of course, but we may safely assert that their use is always compatible with and only with the idea of a single, indivisible thing; generally a political unity, as when they are used to personify the nation or the Government; sometimes a geographical unity, as in the clause under consideration and others to which we shall call attention, but always an unity. And we shall find, moreover, that when a term is needed to avoid an enumeration of the States whose "people"-not they themselves as bodies politic-formed a more perfect union by ordaining and establishing the Constitution, a less curt but more apt expression is at hand for the purpose.

We cannot obtain much light upon the meaning of the term "United States" by reference to its use in the period of the Continental Congress. By the Articles of Federation thirteen separate and independent States associated themselves together for very limited purposes; and while the "style of this confederacy" was "the United States of America," their separate sovereignty and independence of each other were in constant view (arts. 2, 3). "America" had not yet "chosen to be a nation." At that time, too, and at that of the debates in the Congress on the subject of taxation, the words, used in their broadest geographical sense, included no territory which did not belong to, or was not claimed by, one or other of the States. No strong inference can be drawn, then-to take one example-from the use of the term in the treaty of peace (Tr. and Conv. 376, Art. II) as signifying the entire territory, the rights of "His Britannic Majesty" over which were relinquished, any more than from its use in Article I, as signifying the thirteen enumerated States which formed the Federation; or from the examples, taken by themselves, of its use in the Articles of Confederation presently to be mentioned.

But the use of the term in the Articles of Confederation as the equivalent of the States United," while not significant in itself, lends great significance to the avoidance of a similar use in the Constitution itself. A striking instance is found in the provisions of the

two instruments for the extradition of criminals, that in the latter being eyidently a recasting of that in the former:

Arts. of Conf'n, art. 4.

If any person guilty of, or charged with, treason, felony, or other high misdemeanor in any State shall flee from justice, and be found in ANY OF THE UNITED STATES, he shall, upon demand of the governor or executive power of the State from which he fled, be delivered up and removed to the State having jurisdiction of his offense.

Const. U. S., Art. IV., § 2, subd. 2.

A person charged in any State with treason, felony, or other crime who shall flee from justice and be found in ANOTHER STATE shall, on demand of the executive authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having jurisdiction of the crime.

So, too, we frequently find in the Articles of Confederation such expressions as "the United States, or either of them" (7. 12 of art. 4, at 1 Ell. Deb., p. 79 (2nd ed., 1896); "the United States, or any of them" (7.5 of art. 6, id. 80); "the United States in Congress assembled, or any of them" (ibid., 1. 7); "throughout all the United States" (art. 9, id. 82, 1. 47); "the United States, or any of them" (id. 83, 1. 37), and "a majority of the United States in Congress assembled” (ibid. 1. 43). And the phrase "the United States in Congress assembled" is constantly recurring. In all these cases "the United States" is used as a substitute for the enumeration of the thirteen States which were united.

In the Constitution, however, we find that idea expressed in quite different words. Representatives and direct taxes are not to be apportioned among the United States but "among the several States which may be included within this Union." (Art. 1., § 2, subd. 3.) "Nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to prejudice any claims of the United States or," not "of any of them,” but “of any particular State." (Art. IV, § 3, subd. 2.) It is not all officers of the United States, or any of them, but those both of the United States and of the several States" who are required to be bound to support this Constitution." (Art. VI, subd. 3.)

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find a single instance in the original Constitution of a relapse into the form of expression so common in the Articles of Confederation, in the provision of Art. II, § 1, subd. 7, that "the President shall not receive any other emolument from the United States, or any of them;" but that provision was interpolated, after the second draft had been submitted, on motion of Dr. Franklin and Mr. Rutledge, and in their own words. (Mad. Jour. Conv., Sept. 15, 1787, p. 734.)

With this single exception we do not find an instance in the whole Constitution, in which the expression "the United States" occurs fifty-two times, where the words "the American Republic" could not be substituted without varying the sense in any degree.

Of the use of the word "United States," in a geographical sense, we find but three instances besides that in question:

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"The Congress shall have power to establish an uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws on the subject of ankruptcies, throughout the United States." (Art. I, § 8, subd. 4.)