2« THE ¢ NEWS
e INTERPRETEID
Prohibitive Taxes on Books
AR HAT the United States Supreme
| Ng Court grant a rehearing upon its
a five-to-four decision June 8, hold-
ing constitutional city ordinances which
impose license taxes upon the sale of
printed matter, is the plea contained in a
petition filed with that tribunal. In sup-
port of the petition the American News-
paper Publishers Association filed a brief
with the Supreme Court September 3, in
which it is maintained that “any tax or
other exaction which falls directly upon
the act of circulation is an unconstitutional
restraint upon the liberty of the press.”
Counsel for a group of “Jehovah’s
Witnesses,” accused of vending religious
books and pamphlets in three towns in
Alabama, Arkansas, and Arizona without
having paid special license fees or taxes,
followed the petition for a rehearing.
The American Civil Liberties Union also
joined in the request for a reconsidera-
tion.
As quoted by the New York Times
(September 14), the publishers in their
brief express the thought that the majority
opinion of the Supreme Court ‘estab-
lishes a dangerous precedent for licensing
the press by legislative devices which
resurrect the evils the First Amendment
[freedom of the press] was intended for-
ever to remove.” “The very fact of licens-
ing to engage or continue in the business
of publishing or circulating newspapers,”
said the brief, “destroys the independence
of the press. . . .
“If there is power to impose license
taxes as a price for carrying on the opera-
tions of the press, then there is nothing to
prevent the Legislature from declaring
that the business of publishing news-
papers is a business to be licensed. And
if it can so declare, it can also license the
preacher of the gospel and can limit those
who can preach, to the destruction of
freedom of religion as guaranteed by the
First Amendment.”
®
In this decision upon which a rehearing
1s asked, two issues seem to be involved,
namely, freedom of religion and freedom
of the press. It is one thing to print, it
1s another to publish, for publication
includes both printing and circulation.
Webster defines the word publish: “To
bring before the public, as for sale or
distribution; especially to print, or cause
to be printed, and to issue from the press,
either for sale or general distribution.”
This principle, that a piece of printed
matter is not published until distribution
begins 1s recognized by the Library of
Congress, which issues copyrights only
when a copyright application is filed
Page EIGHT
Jan: 0
INTERNA EXINA
X The transportation difficulties of this Russian farmer are far more serious than ‘‘tire trouble.”
While his horses wade through ice-covered water up to their noses, this peasant tries to steady his
load of forage, which must be transported across an ice-bound river without a bridge.
ALAN
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naming, not the time of printing, but the
time of publication. To interfere with
distribution of the products of the press
becomes, therefore, as much an interfer-
ence with the freedom of the press as does
the actual stopping of the machinery or
the censoring of matter before publication.
But since the books or pamphlets cir-
culated by this sect were of a religious
character, there is also involved the ques-
tion of whether it 1s constitutional to
enact legislation imposing a license fee
or tax which interferes with or prevents
the dissemination of religious views. In
saying this we are not pleading for the
religious views of Jehovah's Witnesses.
In fact we think they are seriously mis-
taken in their interpretation of Scripture.
But the question is not whether they are
right or wrong in their religious convic-
tions, but whether they have the right
under the Constitution to hold those
convictions and publish them to others.
The principles of Thomas Jefferson and
James Madison are still the principles
embodied in the First Amendment to the
Federal Constitution. Said Jefferson: ©“ Al-
mighty God hath created the mind free;
all attempts to influence it by temporal
punishments or burdens, or by civil
incapacitations, tend only to beget habits
of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a
departure from the plan of the holy
Author of our religion, who being Lord
both of body and mind, yet chose not to
propagate it by coercion on either, as was
in His almighty power to do.”— Virginia
ANY
Act for Establishing Religious Freedom,
1785.
Madison stated the matter clearly when
he said: “Religion is not in the purview
of human government. Religion is es-
sentially distinet from government and
exempt from its cognizance. A connection
between them 1s injurious to both.”—
Letter to Edward Everett, 1823.
As the Committee on Post Offices and
Post Roads said in the House of Repre-
sentatives on March 4 and 5, 1830, in
its famous report on Sunday mails:
“Despots may regard their subjects as
their property, and usurp the divine
prerogative of prescribing their religious
faith; but the history of the world fur-
nishes the melancholy demonstration that
the disposition of one man to coerce the
religious homage of another, springs from
an unchastened ambition, rather than a
sincere devotion to any religion. . . .
The catastrophe of other nations furnished
the framers of the Constitution a beacon
of awful warning, and they have evinced
the greatest possible care in guarding
against the same evil. . . . The principles
of our government do not recognize in the
majority any authority over the minority,
except in matters which regard the conduct
of man to his fellow man. . The
Constitution regards the conscience of the
Jew as sacred as that of the Christian,
and gives no more authority to adopt a
measure affecting the conscience of a
solitary individual than that of a whole
community.”
The WATCHMAN MAGAZINE