ver, when we remember that it was the
property-owning class that framed and secured the adoption of the
Constitution. That they had their own interests in view when they
confined the general government practically to indirect taxes levied
upon articles of general consumption, and forbade direct taxes levied in
proportion to wealth, seems highly probable. It appears, then, that the
recent decision of the United States Supreme Court declaring the Federal
Income Tax unconstitutional merely gave effect to the original spirit
and purpose of this provision.

The disposition to guard the interests of the property-holding class
rather than to prevent legislation for their advantage is also seen in
the interpretation which has been given to the provision forbidding the
states to pass any laws impairing the obligation of contracts. The
framers of the Constitution probably did not have in mind the extended
application which the courts have since made of this limitation on the
power of the states. Perhaps they intended nothing more than that the
states should be prevented from repudiating their just debts. But
whatever may have been the intention of the framers themselves, the
reactionary movement in which they were the recognized leaders, finally
brought about a much broader and, from the point of view of the
capitalist class, more desirable interpretation of this provision.

There is evidence of a desire to limit the power of the states in this
direction even before the Constitutional Convention of 1787 assembled.
The legislature of Pennsylvania in 1785 passed a bill repealing an act
of 1782 which granted a charter to the Bank of North America. James
Wilson, who is said to have suggested the above-mentioned clause of the
Federal Constitution, made an argument against the repeal of the
charter, in which he claimed that the power, or at least the right of
the legislature, to modify or repeal did not apply to all kinds of
legislation. It could safely be exercised, he thought, in the case of "a
law respecting the rights and properties of all the citizens of the
state."

"Very different," he says, "is the case with regard to a law, by which
the state grants privileges to a congregation or other society.... Still
more different is the case with regard to a law by which an estate is
vested or confirmed in an individual: if, in this case, the legislature
may, at discretion, and without any reason assigned, divest or destroy
his estate