Mercantile License Tax: An Inquiry, Is It Constitutional? Who Are, Liable, and How? The Seven, Remedies of the Citizen (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Mercantile License Tax: An Inquiry, Is It Constitutional? Who Are, Liable, and How? The Seven, Remedies of the Citizen

If some favorite child of manifest destiny in his native Philippine swamp should be told that today in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania a particular officer of the government - and he not a legislative officer - may prescribe at his sole discretion a series of questions to be answered by every merchant or shopkeeper concerning the merchant's private affairs and compel the merchant to expose everything to certain agents of the law, as they are called, who may invade his store and counting-house, he might perhaps be puzzled to discern wherein lies the difference between the inquisitorial Spanish and the free American systems.

Were this special charge of Christian humanity told that another officer of the government - not a judicial officer - may require the merchant to appear before him with his private books and accounts, may make such inquiries and examinations as he sees fit and become the inquisitor and judge of all, he might be pardoned if he did not cry out for American freedom.

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