[431] Report of the Commission on Second-Class Mail Matter, p. 143. In his message of February 22, 1912, transmitting this report to Congress, President Taft said: “The findings of the commission confirm the view that the cost of handling and transporting second-class mail matter is greatly in excess of the postage paid, and that an increase in the rate is not only justified by the facts, but is desirable.”
[432] Postal Laws and Regulations of 1913, p. 223.
[433] Lewis Publishing Co. v. Morgan, 229 U. S. 288 (1913).
[434] Veazie v. Fenno, 8 Wall. 533 (1869). Italics mine.
[435] In Edye v. Robertson, 112 U. S. 580 (1884) the Supreme Court said that the imposition “was upheld because a means properly adopted by Congress to protect the currency which it had created,” and the tax was not, therefore, subject to the ordinary rules.
[436] McCray v. U. S., 197 U. S. 27 (1903).
[437] Veazie v. Fenno, above. The distinction has sometimes been drawn between acknowledged powers and implied powers of Congress. For example, the power to tax and to regulate interstate commerce is granted in the Constitution, while that to exclude from the mails is implied from the postal clause. From this it is argued that Congress may be limited in its indirect control under an implied power when the same objection would not apply to the exercise of an acknowledged power. (See the brief of James M. Beck in the newspaper publicity case, printed in Cong. Rec., December 11, 1912.) But this distinction has never been sanctioned by the Supreme Court of the United States.
It is proper, however, in this connection to point out the extraordinary nature of the taxing power, which is, in Marshall’s phrase, the “power to destroy.”
[438] The term is Mr. J. M. Beck’s. See his brief in Lewis Publishing Co. v. Morgan, supra, and his article, “Nullification by Indirection,” 23 Harvard Law Review, 441.
[439] Champion v. Ames, 188 U. S. 321 (1902).