Icon 5686.12 HARVARD COLLEGE L LIBRARY JAN 16 1903 CAMBRIDGE. MASS. From the Quarterly Journal of Economics. Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1902, by In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. PREFACE. The office of a preface to a law treatise, at this time when our profession is overwhelmed with books, is to give, if possible, a reason, or at least an excuse, for the publication. The study of the tax system of any State impresses one with the clear distinction between the taxing power of the State under our complex government, and the construction of the statutes enacted by the State in the exercise of that power. Our States are sovereign in taxation, subject to the restrictions of the Federal Constitution and to the limitations necessarily growing out of our dual form of government. Under the Fourteenth Amendment, the power of the Federal government secures due process of law and the equal protection of the laws in the exercise of this sovereign State authority, so that there is a "Federal question,' whereon the Federal jurisdiction may be invoked, in every tax case in which these fundamental rights are claimed to be denied. Questions of taxation are now engaging the attention of the legislatures and of the courts, as well as of the economists, to a greater extent than ever before. New experiments in taxation are being tried in the attempt to reach the infinite forms of property and business under the complex conditions of modern society. It was said by the Supreme Court of the United States in a recent opinion that it is only of late years, when the burdens of taxation are increasing by reason of the great expenses of govern |