Note 103 — Chapter IV · THE LAW OF TAXATION

P. R. Co. v. Pennsylvania, 15 Wallace, 300 (1872). The constitutional use of the taxing power by the United States and by the several States is examined by Hamilton in The Federalist, No. xxxii.,—the classic contemporaneous exposition of the taxing clauses of the Constitution. For a judicial examination of these clauses see Transportation Company v. Wheeling, 99 U. S., 273 (1878). The idea held both by Hamilton and by the Court is that taxation is the exercise of sovereign power; that “all subjects over which the sovereign power of a State extends are objects of taxation,” but that “objects over which it does not extend, as for example, the means and instruments of the general government, are exempt from taxation.” (The quotation in Transportation Co. v. Wheeling, from McCulloch v. Maryland is not verbally accurate.)