for proposing the income-tax amendment. But the decision of 1895 fanned the fires of social discontent. It unmasked the motives of those opposed to an income tax. On the one hand, are those well able to bear the burden of taxation upon whom a properly administered income tax would to a considerable extent rest. On the other hand, are the beneficiaries of protection who fear that an income tax will deprive them of one pretext for the maintenance of the tariff. The glaring injustice of any income tax apportioned among the several states according to population, in conformity with the court's decision, made such a tax impracticable. One effect was to discredit the court itself. Another fact had a similar effect. In its first decision, the court divided evenly on certain of the points at issue. After reargument it stood five to four against the act on these points. Far from conserving the social order, the in come-tax decision did quite the reverse.
Professor Daniels says:
Probably the Dartmouth College case has been more often quoted than any other as indicative of the jealous care with which the Supreme Court safeguards property rights. But few decisions illustrate better the relativity of judicial decisions to the circumstances existing at the time and place. When the decision was handed down, business was still conducted on a very modest scale, and the era of the corporate form of business organization was yet to come. In view of the important respects in which the doctrine of charter rights has been modified in subsequent cases, it is probable that the decision handed down in 1819 would have been different if the industrial changes of the next fifty years had been foreseen. Some one has aptly said that the Supreme
- ↑ Winthrop More Daniels, op. cit., pp. 199, 200 and 206.