Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 3.djvu/284

 L. & N. B. CO. V. QAINES. 277 �ture, as it declared in eome of these acts, intended to confer these rights, powers, and privileges "as fully as if herein set forth at length," and such was the then prevailing belief. No one questioned this interpretation of these acts. No at- tempt was made to levy and collect a tax from these proper- ties, from the date of said respective charters until the act of 1875. That the legislature intended, by the grant to these several companies of the "rights and privileges," and "rights, powers, and privileges," of the Nashville & Chattanooga Eail- way Company, to confer on them the same immunity from taxation tha.t had been granted to the latter, we have no doubt. Are these terms, fairly construed, broad enough to include exemption ? It is admitted that they are, if they are to have the usual force and effect accorded to them by lexi- cographers and jurists or other states; but, as hereinbefore stated, it is assumed that themeaningof the term "privilege" has been restricted by the state constitution, and that, vsrhen employed in a statute, the courts must presume that the leg- islature intended to restrict its meaning within the limits pre- scribed by the constitution. �We dissent entirely from the assumption that the constitu- tion intended, in the provision of that instrument quoted, or any part thereof, to qualify or restrict the force and effect of plain English words. It is true that the constitution for- bids the passage of laws granting rights, privileges, immuni- ties, or exemptions to an individual or individuals, other than Buch as may be by the same law extended to every member of the community who can bring himself vfithin its provisions. Nov? Vfe may, for the sake of the argument, further admit that the use of these terms, in the connection in ■which they stand in the clause quoted, indicates that a different meaning ■was attached to each, and yet it does not foUow that the framers of the constitution intended to give a constitutional definition to these words, and thus, by a constitutional provis- ion, make it the duty of the court, in ail instances in which they find either of them employed in a statute, to construe it as meaning the same as it does in the clause of the constitu- tion referred to. If it occurred nowhere else in that instru- ����