debts for them; nor, in Kansas and Michigan again, be a party to carrying on such works.  But the Tennessee Constitution declares that a well-regulated system of internal improvement should be encouraged by the legislature.  So, in Virginia, no town or county may become a party to any work of internal improvement except roads, and they are frequently forbidden from borrowing money for such purposes.  There is, therefore, considerable constitutional check to legislation in this direction.[1]

[Footnote 1:  See “Federal and State Constitutions,” book III, secs. 92, 324, 345 370, 391, and 395.]

Taxation, of course, has from all time been the universal limitation upon property rights, though it is important to remember that until the present budget there has not in modern times been an attempt at direct taxation of the capital value of land in England; Cobbett records many “aids” of a few shillings per hide of land in Anglo-Norman times.  The earliest taxation was the feudal aids imposed purely for defensive purposes, for building forts and bridges; later for foreign wars or crusades.  We have traced the origin of the scutage tax as a substitute for military service and the two great constitutional principles that all taxation must be with the common consent of the realm; that is to say, of Parliament, later of the House of Commons; and must also and equally be for the common benefit.  Theorists have argued, particularly with us, that under the latter principle protective tariffs are unconstitutional; but even if it be admitted that they are not for the benefit of the whole people, the exception is as old as the rule; protective tariff laws, and, earlier still, laws absolutely prohibitive of importation, being plentiful on the English statute-books before and at the time this earliest of constitutional principles appeared.  There is a step beyond the protective tariffs, however, which is naturally mentioned in this connection, and that is the bounty—­sums of money paid to certain interests and derived from the general taxes fund.  Under the Acts of Congress there has been, I think, only one instance of a bounty; that is in the case of the Louisiana sugar-growers.  In State legislation it has been a little more usual.  Foreign countries, notably Germany and France, as to beet sugar, etc., have been in the habit of giving bounties.  This precedent undoubtedly suggested it; but these countries do not enjoy our constitutional principles.  There has hardly been a direct decision on the constitutionality of the Federal bounty, but as to State bounties we find several, with an increasing tendency to hold void such laws.  There can be no question that they are utterly against our whole constitutional system.  The Supreme Court, when considering sugar-bounty laws, seems to have thought that it might be sustained as a compensation made for a moral obligation, the Louisiana planters having been led into industries from which the protection