Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/497

Rh will have the pleasure, no doubt, of paying more than face value for the water now so freely allowed to issue."

On this subject the late Chief-Justice Taney expressed his views as follows, in a case that came up before the United States Supreme Court in 1853: "The powers of sovereignty confided to the legislative body of a State are undoubtedly a trust committed to them to be executed to the best of their judgment for the public good; and no one Legislature can by its own act disarm its successors of any of its powers or rights of sovereignty confided by the people to the legislative body, unless they are authorized to do so by the Constitution under which they are elected. They can not, therefore, by contract, deprive a future Legislature of the power of imposing any tax it may deem necessary for the public service, or of exercising any other act of sovereignty confided to the legislative body, unless the power to make such contract is conferred upon them by the Constitution of the State. And in every controversy on this subject the question must depend on the Constitution of the State, and the extent of the power thereby conferred on the legislative body."

The subject again came up before the United States Supreme Court in 1869, 1871, and 1872, when the question at each time was treated as res adjudicata (definitely settled). In the first of these instances Justice Miller thus expressed his views: "We do not believe that any legislative body, sitting under a State Constitution of the usual character, has a right to sell, to give, or bargain away forever the taxing power of the State. This is a power which, in modern political societies, is absolutely necessary to the continued existence of every such society. While under such forms of government the ancient chiefs or heads of the Government might carry it on by revenues owned by them personally and by the exaction of personal service from their subjects, no civilized Government has ever existed that did not rely upon taxation in some form for the continuance of that existence. To hold, then, that any one of the annual Legislatures can, by contract, deprive the State forever of the power of taxation is to hold that they can destroy the Government they are appointed to serve, and that their action in that regard is strictly lawful. The result of such a principle, under the growing tendency to special and partial legislation, would be to exempt the rich from taxation and cast all the burden of the support of government on those who are too poor or too honest to purchase such immunity."

Like dissenting views have also found expression in various State courts. Chief-Justice Beasley, of New Jersey, for example, in commenting on the proposition that a charter of incorporation is a contract, says: "The entire contract on the part of a State, implied in such cases, is the supposed legislative agreement not