Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 2).pdf/452

 public with seed grain is not in any sense a “contribution,” but it is a debt owing by him to the county for value received by him in the form of property. If it could be regarded as a contribution, it is not a proportionate contribution, for he who owes the duty to make this payment owes it in addition to his duty to pay his proportion of taxes, and he may be the only person in the county upon whom this extra obligation rests. Neither can it be said to be an “enforced” contribution. Whatever he is bound to pay is owing because of his voluntary purchase of seed grain from the county. There is no coercion. He pays what he agrees to pay and no more. The money is not paid for the support of the government, nor for any public purpose. So far as the statute apportions the burden of furnishing this seed grain among all taxpayers, the sum so apportioned is a proper tax. This we have held under the peculiar phraseology of our constitution, and in view of the trend of legislation in the northwestern agricultural states, acquiesced in by the people, which we regarded as so expanding the significance of the words “ public purpose,” when applied to taxation, as to make the imposition of taxes for such a purpose constitutional. State v. Nelson Co.,1 N. D. 88. But there is no resemblance—not the faintest—between the enforced obligation resting upon all alike to keep a portion of the population destitute of means and credit from becoming a public charge by affording them temporary relief, and the voluntary obligation assumed by the unfortunate citizen on receiving public aid to pay back to the public treasury the value of that aid. The obligation resting upon him who has been supplied with seed grain, common to all other taxpayers in the county, to contribute the funds to furnish him this seed grain, is, when legally apportioned, a tax. The obligation resting upon him alone to pay to the county the value of this property is a debt pure and simple, without a single element of a tax about it. No part of the money paid by him in discharge of this obligation goes to the support of the government. Not a penny of it is paid to buy seed grain for others. It is paid only to discharge a personal debt to the county for aid received.