Perhaps the most striking illustration of the power of the court to declare acts of Con gress itself invalid, as contrary to the Consti tution, was the celebrated Income Tax (q.v.) case. Congress in 1894 had passed a General Revenue Law, certain sections of which im posed an income tax upon all incomes exceed ing a certain amount named. This tax was levied indiscriminately upon all incomes alike, from whatever source derived, whether from the rents of real estate, the income of invested personal property or from earnings. But the Constitution had ordained that direct taxes should be apportioned among the several States according to the numbers of their respective populations, in contradistinction to duties, im posts and excises, which should be uniform throughout the United States. It was con tended by those who challenged the validity of the law, that taxes on rent, and taxes on the income derived from invested personal property, were direct taxes within the meaning of the Constitution, and that instead of being levied uniformly, man for man, throughout the United States, they should have been appor tioned among the several States according to population. The difference was very consider able and substantial. The effect of the act, if sustained, would be to throw the principal burden of the tax upon a few large States, in which the relative proportion of wealth was in excess of the relative proportion of popula tion, and to exempt the other States propor tionally from their constitutional share of the tax. The opponents of the income tax also insisted that any inequality, which should arise from its being apportioned among the States according to population, was an inequality con templated by the framers of the Constitution, and was intended to prevent an attack upon accumulated property by mere force of num bers. The court, against vehement and power ful opposition at the bar, and from a formidable minority of the members of the court itself, took this 'view, and declared the tax to have been laid unconstitutionally, so far as it affected incomes from rents and from invested per sonal property. And as the invalid por tions constituted so large a proportion of the whole income tax levied by the act, that Congress could not be deemed to have intended to impose the rest without them, it further adjudged that all the income tax provisions of the act, which constituted a single and entire scheme, .must be held void. There were some popular protests against the deci sion, and direful prophecies that it would dis able the nation in future emergencies from raising revenue it needed, but no such re sults have yet appeared. Congress, in its sub sequent enactments, has conformed to the deci sion, and when the war with Spain came on, and an immensely enlarged revenue was needed at once, it found no difficulty in imposing taxes constitutionally and so successfully that, the year after the war closed, the Treasury was found to be burdened with so great a sur plus that the entire body of war taxes had to be repealed at once. The same case contains a fine illustration of the power of the court to protect the States in the exercise of their legitimate power to manage their own affairs from interference by the Federal government. The income tax was levied also upon income derived from the interest upon bonds issued by municipal corporations, which were but civil divisions of the States, and the court held that as a tax upon the income of municipal bonds tended to cripple the power of the local au thorities to raise money for the purposes of local government, it was not within the power of the Federal government to impose it, any more than it would be constitutional for the States to impair the power of the Federal gov ernment to raise money for Federal purposes by taxing its bonds.
By the adoption of the 14th Amendment (q.v.), to meet the conditions resulting from the abolition of slavery at the close of the Civil War, new restraints were imposed upon the States, the consideration of which has largely occupied the attention of the Supreme Court. It provides that No State shall make or en force any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.J Doubtless this amendment was primarily intended for the protection of the newly emancipated slaves, especially in the States where they had so long been held in bondage, but in its language there is no distinction of race or color, and the court held that it could make no such dis tinction in its application, which must be made alike to all cases and subjects that came within the scope of its language in its natural mean ing.
It must not be thought, however, from these numerous restraints imposed by the Constitu tion upon the power of the States, and the very considerable number of cases (exceeding 200 in all) in which the Supreme Court has pro nounced their statutes invalid, that the court is biased against the States or inclined unduly to enforce the limits imposed upon them. On the contrary, it has been quite as jealous and careful to uphold and maintain the reserved rights of the States in all matters of local and domestic concern, and to protect them from violation by the Federal government, as it has been to maintain the exclusive province of Congress in national concerns against intrusion by the State legislatures. It has endeavored, with success, to maintain the just and exact balance of power between them as prescribed by the Constitution. As against the 225 cases in which State laws have been invalidated by its judgments, vastly more numerous cases will be found, in its reports, in which State laws have been maintained by it against attack on the ground that they involved a violation of the Federal restraints. If, then, it be asked — why has it only pronounced about 35 acts of Con gress invalid on constitutional grounds; while' 225 State laws have been condemned? the an swer is that there are 48 States and only one Congress, and that the members and com mittees of Congress are much more familiar with the Federal Constitution than those of a State legislature, who naturally look first to that of their own State. It is notable, too, that the legislators of some States must be much more studious of the Federal Constitution than others, for while Louisiana, which became a State in 1812 and from its French origin has retained the civil law instead of the common law, has had 20 of its laws pronounced invalid for violation of the Constitution, Massachu setts, one of the original 13 States, has only suffered twice in this way in her whole his tory.
Con ess is, of course, in the first instance the ju e of the constitutionality of its own acts, an its members, being mostly lawyers, are familiar with the letter and spirit of the Con stitution. The cardinal and wholesome rule of the court has been, not to pronounce either a State or Federal law invalid on constitutional grounds unless the violation is clearly estab lished, that the presumption is in favor of the validity of a statute, and that this continues until the contrary is shown beyond a rational doubt. The Supreme Court has felt that one branch of the government cannot encroach on the domain of the other without danger, and that the safety of our institutions depends in no small degree on a strict observance of this salutary rule. It speaks volumes for the wis dom and caution of the court which is vested with this remarkable and fascinating power, that in so great a mass of State legislation, some of it crude and undigested, consisting of thousands of volumes, it has not found it neces sary to exercise the power much more fre quently. It has been a source of frequent wonder to foreign observers that a written Constitution, which was framed in the 18th cen tury for 13 feeble States, with 3,000,000 of people of substantially uniform wealth or poverty, scattered along the Atlantic seaboard, and for whose government it was regarded as a precarious experiment, should be found to an swer as well in the 20th century for the needs of a great nation of 80,000,000 in 48 States, occupying the breadth of the continent, with gigantic accumulations of individual and corpo rate property, with conflicting interests and sen timents, and wide differences of social condi tion. There was much debate in the discus sions which resulted in the adoption of the Constitution, whether the government which it called into being could reach and control even a people that was expected to occupy the terri tory which the Treaty of Peace of 1783 secured to the United States, which extended only from the Atlantic to the Mississippi River, and from the lakes to the northern boundary of Florida. Since that time our territory has expanded more than four times, and now embraces in sular possessions of vast extent, at enormous distance from the seat of government and half way round the globe.