principle itself can hardly be carried much farther, but it will
be necessary to have some understanding or arrangement between the
States, whereby double or treble succession taxes are not imposed
on the same estate, as notably in the case of the stock or bonds of
railroads chartered in several States, all of which may undertake to
impose full succession taxes upon such stock. It has been held
that succession taxes may be graded even in cases where a State
constitution provides for proportionate taxation, the tax being an
excise tax and not a direct property tax; but this is not so in
respect to income taxes. We may assume therefore that income taxes
must be equal in States which have this constitutional provision,
although in one or two of them recent statutes have exempted a portion
of the income of veterans of the Civil War. This might be sustained as
a pension, pensions being for actual military service constitutional,
and are in the Southern States expressly permitted to Confederate
soldiers and their families--despite the implied prohibition of the
Fourteenth Amendment.

The last form of taxation, that of an excise upon licenses or trades,
is most usual in the South. An increasing number of trades are thus
being taxed or regulated. Sometimes the taxation is put under the
guise of a fee for examination and licensing, sometimes plainly as an
excise tax. Undoubtedly such taxation is against all the history
of our legislation demanding complete freedom of labor and trade.
Nevertheless, it has not been held unconstitutional by the States
except, of course, when touching a trade which is interstate commerce,
though the _examination_ occasionally has been. Such taxation has not
yet become popular in the North, except definitely for the purpose of
examination and license; but it is almost universal in the South, many
States indeed providing by their constitution or laws that all trades
and callings may be thus taxed. These taxes may be arbitrary in
amount, but are sometimes graded according to the amount of business
done. Such legislation has been sustained in so far as it is a tax or
a license imposed for protecting the public health in a reasonable
manner; thus, doctors, plumbers, nurses, dentists, etc., have been
submitted to such regulation, but in the case of blacksmiths its
constitutionality was in one State denied, and the law as to barbers
in several States annulled. Nevertheless, it will always be a popular
me