Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 5.djvu/351

THE SUGAR BOUNTIES. 335 subscription to the stock of a railroad or manufacturing company. The court held the Act void. The opinion, written by Mr. Justice Gray, of Massachusetts, uses the following language : The general grant of legislative power in the Constitution of the State does not enable the legislature, in the extrcise either of the right of eminent domain, or of the right of taxation, to take private property, without the owner's consent, for any but a public object. Nor can the legislature authorize counties, cities or towns to contract, for private objects, debts which must be paid by taxes. It cannot, therefore, authorize them to issue bonds to assist merchants or manufacturers, whether natural persons or corporations, in their private business. These limits of the legislative power are now too firmly established by judicial decisions to require extended argument upon the subject. . . . We have been referred to no opposing decision. 1 There seems, as stated in the last case, no authority to the con- trary. Indeed, as is said in the Topeka case (20 Wall., at p. 664), the proposition — that taxation can only be for a public object, and that where the direct and primary benefit goes to an in- dividual any incidental public advantage from the existence or prosperity of this individual or his industry cannot make such taxation for a public object — is really settled by the meaning of words, by a resort to the dictionary. A "tax," says Webster's Dictionary, " is a rate or sum of money assessed on the person or property of a citizen by government/*??' //^ use of the Nation or State." It seems clear,therefore,that were the sugar bounties matter of State legislation, they would be unconstitutional under the unanimous weight of American authority. If the judicial reserve of courts of last resort in important States is so far shocked by a concealed and guarded benefit to an individual or industry from the general tax-fund as to force the use of such ugly words as " robbery," "despotism," "confiscation," "spoliation," "usurpation," "com- munism," "plunder," "favoritism," etc., it can hardly be supposed that so bald an arrangement as a bounty would be considered an exception to the rule. 2 1 Same case, 19 Fed. Rep. 871. 2 Bissell v. City, 64 111. 249; English v. People, 96 111. 566; State v. Foley, 30 Minn. 350; Curtis v. Whipple, 24 Wis. 350; Brick Co. v. Brewer, 62 Me. 62; Iron Works v. Moundsville, 1 1 W. Va. 1 ; Trustees of Brooke Academy *, George, 14 W. Va. 41 1, 425; McConnell v. Hamm, 16 Kan. 228, accord.