34. The supreme court of the United States is one of the most famous and respected courts in the world. The judges have always been honest and able men and they are very independent. If any legislative body, even the congress of the United States, makes a law which is contrary to the federal Constitution, the supreme court, in deciding a case under the law, will plainly declare it to be no law at all, because it is unconstitutional. Then no one will be bound to obey that act any longer. This is a very great power, and one which is not possessed by the courts of European nations.

35. The supreme court is a very dignified body. The members wear silken gowns when the court is in session. Their meetings are held in the capitol at Washington. One of the nine members, the chief justice, presides. The most famous of the chief justices was John Marshall, of Virginia. He held the office for over thirty years, from 1801 to 1835.

CHAPTER XIV

How the Government Gets Money

1. Cost of Government.—All this work which the government does for the people takes money. Members of legislatures and judges and mayors and policemen and firemen and all the rest of the servants of the people cannot afford to work for nothing. They have to be paid. The salary of the president of the United States is $50,000 a year. Members of congress, whether senators or representatives, receive $5,000 a year. Members of the president's cabinet have $8,000, and justices of the supreme court $10,000 a year. The chief justice has $10,500. There are very few public officers who are not paid. Members of school boards and of some few other boards seldom have salaries. In cities there are streets to be paved and sewers to be made. Then, there are public buildings of all sorts-post-offices, court-houses, schoolhouses, fire-engine houses, prisons, and many others. All these require money to build. So we see that it is impossible to have any sort of government without money to keep it going. Where does the money come from? 2. Taxes. It is the people who create the government and for whom the government does the work. So, of course, the people must pay the cost. And the money

which people pay to the government for its support is called taxes.

3. Taxes are paid to the federal government and to the state governments.

4. Federal Taxes.-The most of the taxes of the federal government come from duties, or, as they are also called, customs (page 162). Duties are sums of money paid by merchants to the federal government for the privilege of bringing goods into our country from foreign countries. For instance, we get sugar from Cuba, coffee from Brazil and from Java, tea from China, wines from France, and immense quantities of all sorts of goods from Great Britain. When a ship loaded with foreign goods reaches one of our seaports, it is not allowed to land its cargo until officers of the United States treasury department have made an examination to see what is on board, and arrangements have been made to pay the duty. The duty is sometimes reckoned at a certain per cent. of the value of the goods, sometimes at a fixed sum on a certain quantity. The former are called ad valorem, the latter specific, duties. In each of our border towns there is a United States custom-house, whose officers are busy examining imported goods and receiving the duties, which they then pay over into the United States treasury. From this source the treasury received in the year 1896 no less than $160,000,000, and in 1890 the amount was $229,000,000. These are sums of money so vast that it is almost impossible to imagine them. But all this and much more were used by the treasury in paying the expenses of the federal government.

In fact, about a hundred fifty

millions more are paid into the treasury from what is called the internal revenue. This consists of money paid by manufacturers of distilled spirits, like whisky, and of tobacco and cigars, and a few other things. Every time one buys a stamp to mail. a letter a tax is paid to the government of the United States. This tax is not a large one, as all the government wants is to get enough from the sale of stamps to pay the actual cost of carrying the mails. In fact, this cost is seldom quite met by the sale of stamps.

5. Indirect Taxes.-If a merchant pays a duty on goods which he imports, he will try to get it back by charging a higher price when he sells them. And the same is true of the manufacturer of whisky or cigars. Of course, if it happens that other people have similar articles to sell which are not imported and which can be sold at a profit for less money than the importer wants, the latter may not be able to get back the tax he has paid. But usually the higher price can be obtained; and whenever that is the case, we see at once that the tax is paid in the end by the person who drinks the coffee or who smokes the cigars. Such taxes, which in the end are paid by some one else than the person from whom the money comes to the government, are called indirect taxes. Federal taxes have nearly all been of this kind, and all of them are provided in laws made by the congress of the United States.

6. State Taxes.-The taxes which pay the expense of state, county, and city government are provided in laws made by the state legislature or by local bodies.

7. People who own land and buildings pay a certain sum every year. A public officer, the assessor, decides what a

given piece of land is worth. This is usually a smaller sum than the property would actually bring in the market. Then the tax paid by the owner is great or small, according to the assessed value of his property, the rate of taxation being so many cents or mills on the dollar as may be determined by the legislature. Usually a part of the tax is for the state government, a part for the county, and a part for the city or village. This sort of tax is called direct, because it cannot so easily be passed on to some one else.

8. People in some states also pay a tax on other valuables which they may own besides land and buildings. The assessor decides as well as he can what each person's things are worth, and the tax is paid accordingly. In some states, again, a poll tax is levied; that is, a certain amount to be paid by each person, without regard to his property.

9. Public Debts. Sometimes the expenses of the government are so great that even very large taxes are not enough to pay them. Then the government borrows money, giving to the lender a bond, to show that the money is owed and will be paid. On this bond the government pays interest every year, and in the end expects to pay the principal. Of course the taxes have to be made greater so as to pay these charges.

10. The debts which governments have to carry in this way are very great. Cities borrow money, usually for erecting public buildings, paving streets, making sewers, and the like. Some city governments have been extravagant and dishonest, and in this way such cities have great debts with very little to show for them.

II. The debt of the federal government has been caused