Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 10.djvu/534

522 FEDERAL REFOBTEB. �months from the time of said decision, or within six montlis from the tiiae the act talies effect: provided, that if said decision shall be delayed more thau six months from the date of such appeal, tlien said suit may be brouglit at any time witWn 12 montlis from the date of such appeal." �By section 10 of the act of March 2, 1867, (14 St. at Large, 475,) it waa enacted that section 19 of the said act of 1866 be amended "by adding the following thereto:" "And no suit for the purpose of re- straining the assessment or collection of a tax shall be maintained in any court." The word "any" appears to have been inserted by the revisers. The enactment in section 3224 ought not to be construed as having any other meaning thanit had when, after the act of 1867, it formed a part of section 19 of the act of 1866 by being added thereto. The first part of section 19 related to a suit to recover back money paid for a "tax alleged to have been erroneously or ille- gally asaessed or collected," and the section, after thus providing for the circumstancea under which such a suit might be brought, pro- ceeded to say that "no suit for the purpose of restraining the assess- ment or collection of tax shall be maintained in any court." By all the rules for coustruing statutes the addition of 1867 may properly be construed as in pari materia with the previens part of the section, and as relating to the same subject-matter. As the "tax" spoken of in the first part of the section is a "tax alleged to have been erroneously or illegally assessed or collected," and as, thongh an allegation of illegal- ity or error is made, the thing is still called, suh modo, a "tax," in tiie first part of the section, it would seem proper to hold that when the section speaks of tax in the addition it means a thing which is in a condition to be collected as a tax, and is claimed by the public au- thorities to be a tax, althongh on the other side it is alleged to have been illegally or erroneously assessed. This would dispose of the view that section 3224, in speaking of a "tax," means only a legal tax, and that an illegal tax is not a tax, and so does not f all within the inhibition of the statute, and the collection of it may be restrained. �But the question as to the proper construction of the statute bas corne up in several cases. �In Howland v. Soule, Deady, 413, in 1868, in the circuit court of the United States for the district of California, a bill was filed to restrain a United States collector of internai revenue from colleeting by distraint a tax assessed against a manufacturer, on the ground that the tax was illegal, and therefore no tax. The inhibition of the ��� �