Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/823

Rh "Taxation and protection are correlative terms. Protection to the person is the ground on which the right to tax the person rests. Protection to the business, protection to that portion of the property not taken by the tax, is the consideration or compensation for all legitimate taxation on business or on property. The person must be domiciled within the State to be subject to a personal or poll tax; the business or the property must also be within the territory of the State to confer jurisdiction over them. That the person of the plaintiff is within the jurisdiction, and subject therefore to the taxing power, is apparent from the record. This tax, however, is not imposed on the person; it is imposed on the property of the plaintiff, and as such it must be sustained, if sustained at all. The case does not require any description of the various species of property, real, personal, etc. Real property has, of course, an immovable situs, and can never be subject to any taxation except that imposed by the government within whose jurisdiction it is situate. The reason is, that that government is the only one that can afford it protection. Personal property, of whatever it may consist, though capable of being transported from place to place, if it be of a visible and tangible kind, would seem, in the nature of things, to follow the same rule and for the same reason—that is, to be subject to taxation by the State within whose jurisdiction it is situate, as that State only has dominion over it, and as that State only can afford it protection.

"Now, if the property in question be considered real property, it being in the State of Illinois, any tax upon it by Connecticut would be extraterritorial and void. If it be considered personal property, of a visible and tangible character, it is still in the State of Illinois, and so just as much out of the dominion and beyond the jurisdiction of the State of Connecticut as though it were real property. If we consider the property to be an interest in real or personal property, or a title, inchoate, equitable, or legal, to such property in Illinois, such interest, or such title, is no legitimate subject of taxation in Connecticut. The corpus and situs of this property being in Illinois, and subject, of course, to taxation there because within her jurisdiction, no interest in it, no title to it, can be taxable in Connecticut. Such a claim involves one of two absurdities: either that the same property may be in two places at the same time, or that two independent governments can have jurisdiction over the same subject-matter at one and the same time.

"But the property of the plaintiff on which this tax has been imposed is not real property, nor is it personal, of the character here considered. It may be well to describe it precisely, that there may be no room for misunderstanding.

"The plaintiff loaned money in the city of Chicago, in the State