rectly and in slight degree, are frequently made and never questioned. "Third. The government of the United States was constituted by the people of the State, although acting in concert with the people of the other States, and the general good of the people of this State is involved in the maintenance of that general government. In many conceivable ways the action of the town might not only mitigate the burdens imposed upon a class, but render the service of that class more efficient to the general government, and therefore it must be presumed that the legislature found that the public good would be thereby promoted. "And fourth. It is obviously possible, and therefore to be intended, that the General Assembly found a clear equity to justify their action." 1 And the Supreme Court of Wisconsin has said: "To justify the court in arresting the proceedings and in declaring the tax void, the absence of all possible public interest in the purposes for which the funds are raised must be clear and palpable; so clear and palpable as to be perceptible by every mind at the first blush. . . . It is not denied that claims founded in [* 490] equity and justice, in the largest sense of those terms, or in gratitude or charity, will support a tax. Such is the language of the authorities." 2 1 Booth v. Woodbury, 32 Conn. 128. See to the same effect Speer v. School Directors of Blairville, 50 Penn. St. 150. The legislature is not obliged to consult the will of the people concerned in ordering the levy of local assessments for the public purposes of the local government. Cheaney v. Hooser, 9 B. Monr. 350; Slack v. Maysville, &c. R. R. Co., 13 B. Monr. 26; Cypress Pond Draining Co. v. Hooper, 2 Met. (Ky.) 353. Compare People v. Common Council of Detroit, 28 Mich. 228. The legislature cannot delegate to parties concerned the authority to levy taxes for the benefit of their own estates and of those of others interested with them but not consenting. Scuffletown Fence Co. v. McAllister, 12 Bush, 312. 2 Brodhead v. City of Milwaukee, 19 Wis. 652. See Mills v. Charlton, 29 Wis. 411; Spring v. Russell, 7 Greenl. 273; Williams v. School District, 33 Vt. 423. It is not competent for a city to levy taxes to loan to persons who have suffered from a fire. Lowell v. Boston, 111 Mass. 454; s. c. 15 Am. Rep. 39, and note p. 56. Or to supply farmers, whose crops have been destroyed, with provisions, and grain for seed and feed. State v. Osawkee, 14 Kan. 418. Or to aid manufacturing enterprises. Allen v. Jay, 60 Me. 124; s. c. 11 Am. Rep. 185; Commercial Bank v. Iola, 2 Dill. 353; Loan Association v. Topeka, 20 Wall. 655; Opinions of Judges, 58 Me. 590. Or to pay a subscription to a private corporation not for a public purpose. Weismer v. Douglas, 64 N. Y. 91. A city cannot be empowered to erect But we think it clear in the words of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin, that "the legislature cannot . . . in the form of a tax, take the money of the citizen and give to an individual, the public interest or welfare being in no way connected with the transaction. The objects for which money is raised by taxation must be public, and such as subserve the common interest and well-being of the community required to contribute."1 Or, as stated by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, "the legislature has no constitutional right to . . . levy a tax, or to authorize any municipal corporation to do it, in order to raise funds for a mere private purpose. No such authority passed to the assembly by the general grant of the legislative power. This would not be legislation. Taxation is a mode of raising revenue for public purposes. When it is prostituted to objects in no way connected with the public interest or welfare, it ceases to be taxation and becomes plunder. Transferring money from the owners of it into the possession of those who have no title to it, though it be done under the name and form of a tax, is unconstitutional for all the reasons which forbid the legislature to usurp any other power not granted to them." And by the same court, in a still later case, where the question was whether the legislature could lawfully require a municipality to refund to a bounty association the sums which they had advanced to relieve themselves from an impending military conscription, "such an enactment would not be legislation at all. It would be in the nature of judicial action, it is true, but wanting the justice of notice to parties to be affected by the hearing, trial, and all that gives sanction and force to regular judicial proceedings; it would much more resemble an imperial rescript than constitutional legislation: first, in declaring an obligation where none was created or previously existed; and next, in decreeing payment, by directing the money or property of the people to be sequestered to make the payment. The legislature can exercise no such despotic functions." 3 2 a dam, with the privilege afterwards at discretion to devote it to either a public or private purpose; but the public purpose must appear. AttorneyGeneral v. Eau Claire, 37 Wis. 400. 1 Per Dixon, Ch. J., in Brodhead v. Milwaukee, 19 Wis. 652. See also Lumsden v. Cross, 10 Wis. 282; Opin ions of Judges, 58 Me. 590; Moulton v. Raymond, 60 Me. 121; post, p. *194 and note. 2 Per Black, Ch. J., in Sharpless v. Mayor, &c., 21 Penn. St. 168. See Opinions of Judges, 58 Me. 590. 8 Tyson v. School Directors of Halifax, 51 Penn. St. 9. See also [* 491] *The Supreme Court of Michigan has proceeded upon the same principle in a recent case. The State is forbid Grim v. Weisenburg School District, 57 Penn. St. 433. The decisions in Miller v. Grandy, 13 Mich. 540, Crowell v. Hopkinton, 45 N. H. 9, and Shackford v. Newington, 46 N. H. 415, so far as they hold that a bounty law is not to be held to cover moneys before advanced by an individual without any pledge of the public credit, must be held referable, we think, to the same principle. We are aware that there are some cases, the doctrine of which seems opposed to those we have cited, but perhaps a careful examination will enable us to harmonize them all. One of these is Guilford v. Supervisors of Chenango, 18 Barb. 615, and 13 N. Y. 143. The facts in that case were as follows: Cornell and Clark were formerly commissioners of highways of the town of Guilford, and as such, by direction of the voters of the town, had sued the Butternut and Oxford Turnpike Road Company. They were unsuccessful in the action, and were, after a long litigation, obliged to pay costs. The town then refused to reimburse them these costs. Cornell and Clark sued the town, and, after prosecuting the action to the court of last resort, ascertained that they had no legal remedy. They then applied to the legislature, and procured an act authorizing the question of payment or not by the town to be submitted to the voters at the succeeding town meeting. The voters decided that they would not tax themselves for any such purpose. Another application was then made to the legislature, which resulted in a law authorizing the county judge of Chenango County to appoint three commissioners, whose duty it should be to hear and determine the amount of costs and expenses incurred by Cornell and Clark in the prosecution and defence of the suits mentioned. It den by the constitution to engage in works of public [* 492] improvement, except in the expenditure of grants or Persons at Utica had given bond to pay the extraordinary expense that would be caused to the State by changing the junction of the Chenango Canal from Whitesborough to Utica, and the legislature afterwards passed an act requiring the amount to be levied by a tax on the real property of the city of Utica. The theory of this act may be stated thus: The canal was a public way. The expense of constructing all public ways may be properly charged on the community specially or peculiarly benefited by it. The city of Utica was specially and peculiarly benefited by having the canal terminate there; and as the expense of construction was thereby increased, it was proper and equitable that the property to be benefited should pay this difference, instead of the State at large. The act was sustained by the courts, and it was well remarked that the fact that a bond had been before given securing the same money could not detract from its validity. Whether this case can stand with some others, and especially with that of Hampshire v. Franklin, 16 Mass. 83, we have elsewhere expressed a doubt, and it must be conceded that, for the legislature in any case to compel a municipality to assume a burden, on the ground of local benefit or local obligation, against the will of the citizens, is the exercise of an arbitrary power little in harmony with the general features of our republican system, and only to be justified, if at all, in extreme cases. The general idea of our tax system is, that those shall vote the burdens who are to pay them; and it would be intolerable that a central authority should have power, not only to tax localities, for local purposes of a public character which they did not approve, but also, if it so pleased, to compel them to assume and discharge private claims not equitably chargeable upon them. See the New York cases above referred to criticised in State v. Tappan, 29 Wis. 674, 680. See also Shaw v. Dennis, 5 Gilm. 416. The cases of Cheaney v. Hooser, 9 B. Monr. 330; Sharp's Ex. v. Dunavan, 17 B. Monr. 223; Maltus v. Shields, 2 Met. (Ky.) 553, will throw some light on this general subject. The case of Cypress Pond Draining Co. v. Hooper, 2 Met. (Ky.) 350, is also instructive. The Cypress Pond Draining Company was incorporated to drain and keep drained the lands within a specified boundary, at the cost of the owners, and was authorized by the act to collect a tax on each acre, not exceeding twentyfive cents per acre, for that purpose, for ten years, to be collected by the sheriff. With the money thus collected, the board of managers, six in number, named in the act, was required to drain certain creeks and ponds within said boundary. The members of the board owned in the aggregate 3,840 acres, the larger portion of which was low land, subject to inundation, and of little or no value in its then condition, but which would be rendered very valuable by the contemplated draining. The corporate boundary contained 14,621 acres, owned by sixty-eight persons. Thirty-four of these, owning 5,975 acres, had no agency in the passage of the act, and no notice of the application therefor, gave no assent to its provisions, and a very small portion of their land, if any, would be benefited or improved in value by the proposed draining; and they resisted the collection of the tax. As to these owners the act of incorporation was held unconstitutional and inoperative. See also The City of Covington v. other property made to it for this purpose. The State, with this prohibition in force, entered into a contract with a private party for the construction by such party of an improvement in [* 493] the Muskegon River, for which the State was to pay the contractor fifty thousand dollars, from the Internal Improvement Fund. The improvement was made, but the State officers declined to draw warrants for the amount, on the ground that the fund from which payment was to have been made was exhausted. The State then passed an act for the levying of tolls upon the property passing through the improvement sufficient to pay the contract price within five years. The court held this act void. As the State had no power to construct or pay for such a work from its general fund, and could not constitutionally have agreed to pay the contractors from tolls, there was no theory on which the act could be supported, except it was that the State had misappropriated the Internal Improvement Fund, and therefore ought to provide payment from some other source. But if the State had misappropriated the fund, the burden of reimbursement would fall upon the State at large; it could not lawfully be imposed upon a single town or district, or upon the commerce of a single town or district. The burden must be borne by those upon whom it justly rests, and to recognize in the State a power to compel some single district to assume and discharge a State debt would be to recognize its power to make an obnoxious district or an obnoxious class bear the whole burden of the State government. An act to that effect would not be taxation, nor would it be the exercise of any legitimate legislative authority.1 Southgate, 15 B. Monr. 491; Lovingston v. Wider, 53 Ill. 302; Curtis v. Whipple, 24 Wis. 350; People v. Flagg, 46 N. Y. 401; People v. Bacheller, 53 N. Y. 128; People v. Common Council of Detroit, 28 Mich. 228. The author has considered the subject of this note at some length in his treatise on Taxation, c. 21. 1 Ryerson v. Utley, 16 Mich. 269. See also People v. Springwells, 25 Mich. 153. 66 Uniformity in taxation implies equality in the burden of taxation." Bank v. Hines, 3 Ohio, N. S. 15. "This equality in the burden constitutes the very substance de signed to be secured by the rule." Weeks v. City of Milwaukee, 10 Wis. 258. See also Sanborn ". Rice, 9 Minn. 273; State v. Haben, 22 Wis. 660. The reasoning of these cases seems not to have been satisfactory to the New York Court of Appeals. See Gordon v. Cornes, 47 N. Y. 614, in which an act was sustained which authorized "and required" the village of Brockport to levy a tax for the erection of a State Normal School building at that place. No recent case, we think, has gone so far as this. Compare State v. Tappan, 29 Wis. 674; Mayor of Mobile v. Dar |