It will have been seen that, in defending progressive taxation of legacies, the representatives of Illinois carefully refrain from adducing any general considerations, ethical or moral. They warmly denied in their argument that a progressive inheritance tax savored of socialism or communisin, and while admitting that the effect of such a system of taxation is to diffuse property, they stoutly denied that the policy of diffusion was novel or revolutionary in the United States. The defenders of the inheritance-tax law, maintained that, from the very beginning, the United States Government has endeavored to prevent the aggregation of immense personal wealth in the hands of families and individuals, and they cited the abolition of primogeniture as a striking exemplification of the American policy. These points, however, were merely incidental to the legal and technical arguments.

Having the facts and the issues before us, let us turn to the Supreme Court's opinion, which, significantly enough, was unanimous. The court sustains the Illinois law, finding nothing in the Federal Constitution to warrant its rejection. But how does it dispose of the objections of the appellants?

It is highly important to observe that while the court holds that an inheritance tax is a tax not on property, but on the succession, it does not agree with the counsel for Illinois that a tax on the privilege of succession, or any other privilege, need not be uniform. It reaffirms the familiar doctrine that the right to take property by devise or descent is the creature of the law and not a natural right, but it does not build much on this foundation. It says, very significantly: "The power of the States over successions may be as plenary in the abstract as appellee contends for, nevertheless it must be exerted within the limitations of that constitution. If the power of devise or of inheritance be a privilege, it must be conferred or regulated by equal laws."

This absolutely disposes of the alleged great distinction which the appellee sought to erect. All taxes, whether on persons, property, or privileges, must be equal and uniform within the meaning of the 14th Amendment. The question,' therefore, reduces itself to this: Is the Illinois law one affording equal protection? The court answers in the affirmative.

It

is true that the law creates classes, but

States have the power to classify persons and property. The classification must, indeed, be reasonable; it must be based upon some difference which bears a just and proper relation to the attempted classification" and not amount to a mere arbitrary selection; "but," says the court, "there is no precise application of the rule of reasonableness of classification, and the rule of equality permits many practical inequalities."

Examined in this light, the Illinois classification is declared to be within the limits of reasonableness. The first and second classes, based respectively on lineal and collateral relationship, clearly depend on substantial differences -"differences which bear a just and proper relation to the attempted classification." In other words, to tax collateral beneficiaries at a higher rate than lineal ones is not arbitrary or unreasonable. The third class, composed of strangers to the blood, the court admits presents some difficulty. In this class the rate increases as the benefit increases, the amount alone being the basis of difference in rate. This point, vital as it is, the court dismisses with this very brief passage: "That rule of equality does not require, as we have seen, exact equality of taxation. It only requires that the law imposing it shall operate on all alike, under the same circumstances. The tax is not on money; it is on the right to inherit, and hence a condition of inheritance, and it may be graded according to the value of that inheritance. condition is not arbitrary because it is determined by that value; it is not unequal in operation because it does not levy the same percentage on every dollar; does not fail to treat all alike under like circumstances and conditions, both in the privilege conferred and the liabilities imposed.' The jurisdiction of courts is fixed by amounts. The right of appeal is not. As was said at bar the Congress of the United States has classified the right of suitors to come into the United States Courts by amounts. Regarding these alone there is the same inequality that is urged against classification of the Illinois law. All license laws and all specific taxes have in them an element of inequality, nevertheless they are universally imposed, and their legality has never been questioned."

The

Considering the fact that progressive taxation is a new, not to say revolutionary,

principle in the United States, its opponents may deem the court's treatment of the fundamental question in the Illinois case strangely inadequate. Does the above passage imply that amount is a proper basis for classification in any tax law? Would an income tax on progressive lines (such as was proposed last year in a southern State) be as valid as an inheritance tax? If so- and certainly there is no ground afforded in the opinion for any distinction between inheritance taxes and income taxes, since all must be equally regulated by equal laws-all constitutional obstacles in the way of very high rates of progressive taxes are removed. Illinois's highest rate is six per cent., but there is nothing to prevent another State from raising the maximum to ten, fifteen, or twenty per cent. It is even doubtful whether, if a legislature should tax millionaires at the rate of fifty per cent. on inheritances or income, the Supreme Court could, in consonance with the above language, pronounce such a practice a violation of the Constitution.

It is true that courts are not bound by their reasoning, but only by their conclusions with reference to a given state of facts and other substantially similar states of facts. It is not, therefore, safe to infer that any kind or any degree of progressive taxation would be upheld in consequence of the Illinois decision. Still, the logic and argumentation of the court cannot fail to influence legislators.

There can be no doubt that the legacy tax which forms part of the war-revenue bill reported to the Senate by the Finance Committee was made progressive as a direct result of the Illinois decision. The inheritance clause of the Senate bill divided collateral heirs into three classes, and provided for a tax on personal property ranging from one and one-half per cent. to four per cent. Where the value of the property exceeded a million dollars, the rate in each case was to be multiplied by three. In the case of very distant relatives and strangers to the blood, the maximum tax was as high as fifteen per cent. in the Senate Committee's bill. This, of course, was war taxation, but it exemplified the application of the progressive principle in a striking manner.

The Supreme Court has declared an income tax to be a direct tax. This has not prevented the Democratic and Populist platform-makers from demanding the en

actment of an income-tax law. They hope that the court may reverse itself with reference to the question. We may confidently expect to find in the political platforms of the next presidential campaign planks favoring a permanent high and progressive tax on inheritances. There are now no constitutional obstacles to surmount. An inheritance tax is not a tax on persons or property, but an excise on the mere privilege of succession. We also know now that the 14th Amendment does not preclude substantial inequality in taxation. What then is to discourage a movement for a high progressive succession tax?

These considerations were not and could not have been considered by the Supreme Court in connection with the Illinois case. A plain technical question of construction was there presented, and the court decided in accordance with accepted rules of interpretation and long usage. But students and public men may with propriety ponder the larger political consequences that are likely to flow from what many consider a new departure, the first step in the direction of a system of taxation long deemed contrary to "American" principles. Perhaps if the general property tax had been fairly and duly enforced. and tax-dodging had not been practiced on a large scale, no legislature would have dreamed of progressive taxation. It is interesting to remark that ex-President Harrison, chief counsel for the appellants in the Illinois case, warned the tax-dodgers, in his impressive Washington day address (delivered to a Chicago audience), that systematic evasion of the law taxing personal property was bound to produce a widespread demand for retaliatory legislation in the shape of income and legacy taxes. General Harrison expressed himself as emphatically opposed to progressive taxation, but he evidently felt that it was inevitable. As for those who vigorously maintain that true equity and equality can only be reached by progressive taxation, who believe with Frederick the Great and other statesmen, as well as economists, that the only equality to be arrived at is "equality of sacrifice," it is hardly necessary to say that the Supreme Court decision will please them greatly. They will be glad to know that what they think theoretically sound and just is also legal under the United States Constitution.

V. S. YARROS.

At

Their invention has been claimed for the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, French, Germans, Chinese, and Hindus, but antiquarians and scholars think the scale of evidence dips in favor of the last-named. Their coming to Europe was undoubtedly due to the returning Crusaders, who learned the game from the Saracens. first they had scant attention. In the latter part of the fourteenth century they began to lay hold of the playful affections of the people, and are mentioned in monarchical prohibitions against games of chance; in the fifteenth century came their heyday. Kings, nobles, clergy, and commoners bent to their fascinations. Poets and romance-writers had in them a rival theme. Card-playing at Christmas was a law-sanctioned and universal English custom, and was so liked by Sir Roger de Coverley that he gave it encouragement by sending a pack of cards with a string of hog's pudding to every poor family in the parish. Columbus's crew is painted seated round at primero, and careless of land and sea so Fortune smiled.

Vainly ecclesiastics and monarchs thundered against them. Sheltered by the divinity that hedges kings and nobles, aristocrats played on; likewise the commonalty secretly.

France's earliest playing-cards were tarots,* and, excepting their division into suits, were wholly unlike their modern kinsmen. The suits were four or five, composed of ten cards each, numbered consecutively, and bearing devices of swords, cups, money, clubs, and smooth or knotty sticks, corresponding in number to that of the card. And there were

*Also taroes, so named from the design of plain or dotted lines, crossing diagonally, in a checkered fashion, on the back of the cards.

besides a number of picture cards, on which appeared the king, the lover, the chariot, the gibbet, death, the sun, the end of the world, and so forth.

The famous pack painted for the diversion of Charles VI, on which the French base their claim to the invention of cards, were tarots. A perfect conventionality of design did not mark the early cards; to some extent the painter or maker painted as he listed, and Charles's pack reflected that changeful, fantastic mood that so long possessed Europe, and introduced death into the happiest scenes.

The emperor, splendid in silver armor, and bearing the globe and sceptre, is accompanied by an old hermit, muffled in cowl and holding up an hour-glass, the emblem of the flight of time. The pope, tiara-crowned and seated between two cardinals, has death beside him, mounted on a shaggy, gray-coated horse; and before his pitiless scythe fall kings, bishops, popes, and other dignitaries. On the gibbet is suspended a gambler, still grasping his bag of gold; and on another card, the dead, awakened by the blare of the trumpets, are rising from their graves for the last judgment. There were, however, cheerfuller pictures. In a chariot sits an officer in full uniform. Love is symbolized by three couples of lovers, embracing while they converse, and from a cloud two cupids shower them with arrows. On another card is seen a fool holding his cap and bells under his arm, while he counts upon his fingers.

The pictures were painted with miniature delicacy on a gilt background, ornamented with a fanciful pattern in tiny perforations; and around the edges of the cards ran a silvered border, in which a spirally coiled ribbon was pricked. colors were the gayest, but even in scarlet and gold, death and the resurrected dead could hardly be gloom-dispelling.

The

In the fifteenth century the piquet pack appeared, with the now familiar hearts, clubs, diamonds, spades, and court cards - the work, so tradition says, of Étienne Vignolles, called La Hire, France's valorous soldier.

Pasteboard royalty copied the dress of real royalty, and a pack of cards of the reign of Charles VII shows the kings in velvet hat, surmounted by crown ornamented

with a fleur-de-lis, the robe open in front and lined with ermine or miniver, tight doublet, and close stockings of Charles and his nobles. The knaves are clothed like the pages and sergeants-at-arms, in plumed flat cap and large cloak; short dress, close-fitting doublet, and tightdrawn breeches. The queens wear the dress of Mary of Anjou, the Queen, or that of Gérarde Gassinel, Charles's mistress.

con

Another pack of this period shows strongly the variations that were stantly made in the devices. The Mussulman's crescent takes the place of the diamond, and the club is depicted with four branches, the Moorish or Arabian fashion. The knave of clubs and the king of hearts are hairy, ape-like creatures, armed with knotty sticks; and the queen of hearts is also a hirsute-covered savage, bearing a torch. All the other personages wear the court dress. It is thought that those wild figures are a reference to the fatal masked ball Charles VI attended, dressed, like five of his nobles, in a costume of pitch and tow to personate a savage.

The French gave fanciful names to their court cards. The king and queen of clubs in the first-named pack are San Souci and Tromperie; the knave, Rolan. The king of diamonds is Corsute; the queen, En toi te fie; and the king of spades, Apollin. Names changed as rapidly as the fashion, and in the reign of Louis XII the king of hearts is Charles; the queen, Judith. The king of clubs is Arthur; the queen, Rachel. The king of spades is Persabée, which, it is thought, is intended for Bathsheba. And in the reign of Francis I the king of clubs becomes Alexander; the queen of hearts is Judith; the knave of hearts is La Hire, and the knave of diamonds, Hector of Trois.

After the battle of Pavia and the captivity of Francis, Spanish and Italian names appeared upon the cards. The king of spades is Charles Quint. The knaves of clubs, hearts, and diamonds, are Prien Roman, Capita Fili, and Capitane Vallant. The king of diamonds is Charles; the queen, Lucresse. The king of clubs is Hector; the queen, Pentaxlée; the king of hearts is Julius Cæsar; the queen, Hélène; and the king of spades is rechristened David, and his queen, Becia

bée.

The cards of the reign of Henry III mirror the extravagant fashion of his time. The kings, Constantine, Clovis, Augustus, and Solomon appear in all the glory of short slashed jacket, tight-fitting hose, and much puffing about the loins. And the queens, among whom figure Dido, Elizabeth, and Clotilde, wear their crisped hair drawn back and their dresses à vertu garde (hoop-petticoat form).

Gallant Henry IV mounts the throne. The patched boots and borrowed velvet coat give way to kingly splendor, and mimic royalty assumes new names and costumes. Cyrus and Semiramis are king and queen of diamonds; Roxana is queen of hearts; and Ninus, king of spades. The regency of Marie de Medici succeeds, and other fashions are introduced to court and cards. In the French Revolution card sovereignty shared the fate of the Bourbons, and Molière, La Fontaine, Voltaire, and Rousseau held the throne with Prudence, Justice, Temperance, and Fortitude.

English cards were not, as were the French, mere fashion-plates. They entered the field of politics, and a pack of the time of Charles II is a complete satire on the Commonwealth. The designs show the bitterness, boldness, and humor of our comic papers; and, as in them, each cartoon is pointed by an inscription. The knave of clubs depicts Ireton discoursing to a group of Puritans, and below is the inscription, "Ireton holds that saints may pass through all formes to obtaine his ends." The VII of spades derides Feek's declaration at the meeting at Windsor, that the Almighty had appeared to him in a vision and announced that monarchy would never more prevail in England. He is "Feek the Seer," and is pictured preaching to a sparse congregation of Roundheads.

"Lambert, Kt. of ye golden Tulip." The VIII of hearts shows Lambert in the foreground of a prim flower garden, holding a tulip in his hand. This refers to his conspiracy, with eight others, to wrest the power from Parliament, after its cashiering of him. The yellow tulip was their badge. "Cromwell pypeth unto Fairfax » explains the humorous picture of the III of hearts, of a grave-visaged Roundhead playing pipe and tabor for a very roundeyed personage, who is solemnly performing the morris dance. On the ace

of hearts "Cromwell, Ireton, and Hudson,

all in ye same boate," are sailing away from the sun of loyalty towards the night of treason. The sun is represented as a double-rayed full face, and night by a large crescent moon, which shows a face in profile.

A house being sacked by armed men on the ace of clubs and the inscription, "A Free State or a toleration for all sort of Villainy," give the Royalist view of England under Cromwell. The X of clubs shows Oliver seeking God, while the King is murthered by his order." In the foreground Cromwell kneels in prayer, surrounded by four Puritans, and in near perspective is Charles under the headsman's uplifted axe. The queen of spades bears an allusion to the intimacy that was said to exist between Cromwell and Lambert's wife. "The Lady Lambert and Oliver under a Strong Conflict » makes clear the meaning of the embracing couple.

Another pack, published in 1679, enshrines a history of the popish plots, "excellently engraved on copper plates, with a very large description under each card;" and, according to the publisher, "Aspersers of this pack plainly show themselves to be popishly affected."

America adopted the French cards, but she can boast of one pack truly republican. It was manufactured in New York, and dates back to 1848. In it Washington poses as president of hearts; John Adams, of diamonds; Franklin, of clubs; and Lafayette, of spades. Indian chiefs were the knaves, and Venus, Fortune, Ceres, and Minerva, the queens.

The early German cards were thoroughly national. They were called Briefe (letters). The game was Spielbriefe (game of letters); and the card-makers were Briefmaler (painters of letters). The game of cards is a miniature of the great tragic game of real war that blooded the world for so many centuries, and these essentially military people preserved its full significance. The four suits of the early cards Schellen (bells), roth (red), grün (green), and Eicheln (acorns) — depicted the honors and triumphs of war. The place of the ace was filled by a flag, the queens, by knights; and the oldest game was the Landsknecht, or lansquenet (the foot-soldier).

The meaning of the French devices is not so clear. For a long time Father Ménéstrier's theory was accepted. Ac

cording to him, hearts represented the clergy or the choir (chaur); diamonds, the citizens, whose rooms were paved with square tiles; spades, the soldiery; and clubs, laborers. Père Daniel's interpretation is, however, considered more probable. He kept in mind the military characteristics of the game, and asserted that hearts denoted the courage of commanders and soldiers; clubs (which is doubtless a representation of the trefoil, the heraldic flower of Agnes Sorel, Charles VII's favorite), stores of forage; spades and diamonds, offensive and defensive arms; and the ace, from the Latin as, money, that great need of war and peace.

Ireland and Scotland distinguished the VI of hearts and the IX of diamonds with romantic names and histories. "Grace's card" was Ireland's name for the VI of hearts, and this story tells its origin: The Honorable Colonel Richard Grace, an old Cavalier, when Governor of Athlone under James II, was solicited by promises of royal favor to betray his trust and espouse the cause of William III. The grand old Cavalier deigned no reply, but, taking up a card, which happened to be the VI of hearts, he wrote his answer thereon, and handed it in impressive silence to the emissary: "Tell your master that I despise his offer, and that honour and conscience are dearer to a gentleman than all the wealth and titles a prince can bestow."

"Curse of Scotland" was Scotland's name for the IX of diamonds; and this story, which is probably the correct one, claims that it came from the resemblance in the arrangement and shape of the card devices to the nine lozenges on the coat of arms of the Stairs, that old Whig family which for three generations was a thorn in the flesh of the Scotch tories. Sir John Dalrymple, of the first generation, was one of the three persons chosen to offer the crown of Scotland to William and Mary at the Revolution; and he, too, as Secretary of State for Scotland, was held responsible for the massacre of Glencoe. It was his son, the second Earl, who, as ambassador to France during the regency of Orleans, took an active part in defeating the intrigues of the Stuarts, and preserving the crown for the Hanover dynasty.

The knave of clubs figures in a particularly good story. Towards the end of her reign Queen Mary, it seems, granted a commission to a certain Dr. Cole, to make a vigorous and fiery crusade against the