private property of one person for the private use of another person."
Particular care has also been taken by the Courts to close the door against the possibility of making taxation subservient to any private purpose by incorporating it with some public purpose:
Public aid to private purposes can not be secured by yoking them to a public purpose. And where the public and private purposes are attempted to be aided by a single concession, the latter vitiate rather than the former uphold the grant. The entire purpose—or, if there are several, and no rule of apportionment as to the application of the proceeds then all the purposes must be public.—Opinion of Justice Brewer, 23 Kansas, 745.
The cases in which the above conclusions have been apparently antagonized before the courts of the United States have been numerous, and have related mainly to the right of the Legislatures of the several States to levy taxes for purposes in respect to which the paramount object—i. e., for public or private good—was not clearly evident; as for the construction of railroads, the drainage of land, the promotion of sanitary measures, the payment of bounties in aid of educational or charitable institutions whose property is owned by and whose policy is directed by private individuals, religious sects, or corporations, and not by the State, and the like.
The question whether taxation by which aid was afforded by towns or counties to the building of railroads was for a public purpose, has been especially brought to the attention of the courts. State and Federal, in repeated instances; and, although the preponderance of opinion has been in the affirmative when legislative authority has been previously granted, yet the decision of the courts has rarely been unanimous, and in some cases has been adverse. Thus, in People vs. Township (20 Michigan, 452), an act of the Legislature of Michigan authorizing townships to pledge their credit to aid in the construction of a railroad from the city of Detroit to a suburban village was held void in a remarkably able opinion by Justice Cooley. Again, in Whiting vs. Sheboygan (25 Wisconsin, 157), an act of the Legislature of Wisconsin authorizing the county of Fond du Lac to levy a tax, the proceeds of which were to be given to aid the building of a railroad from the city of Fond du Lac to the city of Ripon, was also held by the court to be void.
The argument in favor of the unconstitutionality or wrongfulness of the application of the proceeds of the taxation of the people by States or municipalities for aiding the construction of railroads has been, that they are built by corporations organized mainly for the purpose of gain; that they are under the control of such corporations rather than that of the State; and that the taxes in question went to swell the profits of individuals, and did
