“The apportionment of taxes on the various descriptions of property is an act which seems to require the most exact impartiality; yet there is, perhaps, no legislative act in which greater opportunity and temptation are given to a predominant party to trample on the rules of justice. Every shilling which they overburden the inferior number is a shilling saved to their own pockets.”

— James Madison

Federalist No. 10
1780s, Federalist Papers (1787–1788)

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James Madison 145

4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817) 1751–1836

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Letter to Louis D. Brandeis, dated (22 January 1919).
Extra-judicial writings

“It is admitted that the power of taxing the people and their property is essential to the very existence of Government, and may be legitimately exercised on the objects to which it is applicable, to the utmost extent to which the Government may choose to carry it. The only security against the abuse of this power is found in the structure of the Government itself. In imposing a tax, the legislature acts upon its constituents. This is, in general, a sufficient security against erroneous and oppressive taxation. The people of a State, therefore, give to their Government a right of taxing themselves and their property, and as the exigencies of Government cannot be limited, they prescribe no limits to the exercise of this right, resting confidently on the interest of the legislator and on the influence of the constituent over their representative to guard them against its abuse.”

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17 U.S. (4 Wheaton) 316, 428
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Earl of Clanrickard's Case (1614), Lord Hobart's Rep. 277.

“1. Zero is a number.
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5. Every property of zero, which belongs to the successor of every number with this property, belongs to all numbers.”

Giuseppe Peano (1858–1932) Italian mathematician

As expressed in "The Mathematical Philosophy of Giuseppe Peano" by Hubert C. Kennedy, in Philosophy of Science Vol. 30, No. 3 (July 1963)
Peano axioms

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James Madison 145

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