Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 7.djvu/180

 16S FEDERAL REPORTBB. �county collectora, so far as they are charged witb the duty of collecting city taxes, must be deemed, pro tanto, city ofScers. It therefore seems to me that the demurrer in this case must be Bustained, and ap order must issue for the levy and col- lection of the tax. �The relator claims that he should have now, by order of the court, a mandamus requiring the city to levy and collect, at once, taxes enough to pay the entire amount due upon these judgments, because, as he argued, the city was derelict, and bas been since since 1866, in not levying an annual tax, and it was therefore in the powerof the court to compel them to do now in one year what they ought to have done from year to year. There is a show of plausibility in the position which the relator takes in this regard, that the city could not com- pliain if the court should compel the levy and collection of sufficient taxes in one year to extinguish the whole indebted- ness; but it is obvions, from the mere statement of the amounts of these judgments, and the fact that two pf them have been accumulating interest about 15 years, that the burden of paying this entire indebtedness by one year's levy would be almost insupportable by any municipality of the eize and means of the city of Galena ; and I think that inas- much as the law, as it stood at the time these judgments were rendered, gave the relator the right to insist upon the annual levy of a tax to apply upon his principal, and 1 per cent, to apply upon his interest, that he, by not enforcing that right at the time, has waived it, and no\fr he can only insist upon what might have been done each year. �An order will therefore be made requiring the city to levy a tax of 1 per cent, to apply in the extinguishment of the principal, and 1 per cent, to apply in extinguishment of the interest, on the indebtedness. ��� �