Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/828

806 inharmonious, arbitrary, and capricious tax laws and other laws will be enforced by conflicting legislation of States, required by constitutional obligations to "give full faith and credit to the public acts of other States."

The Connecticut Court of Errors, however, dissolved the injunction and dismissed the petition, Judge Foster alone out of a full bench of five dissenting. An appeal being next taken to the United States Supreme Court, the latter (in 1879) affirmed the judgment of the Connecticut court, the essential points of the opinion rendered by Mr. Justice Harlan being as follows: "The debt which the plaintiff, a citizen of Connecticut, holds against the resident of Illinois is property in his hands. The debt, then, having its situs at the creditor's residence, and constituting a portion of his estate there, both he and the debt are, for purposes of taxation, within the jurisdiction of the State. It is, consequently, for the State to determine, consistently with its own fundamental law, whether such property owned by one of its residents shall contribute, by way of taxation, to maintain its government, and 'its discretion in that regard is beyond the power of the Federal Government to supervise or control, for the reason that such taxation violates no provision of the Federal Constitution'; as manifestly it does not, as supposed by counsel, interfere in any true sense with the exercise by Congress of the power to regulate commerce among the several States; nor does it, as is further supposed, abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, or deprive the citizen of property without due process of law, or violate the constitutional guaranty that the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges of citizens in the several States.

" Whether the State of Connecticut shall measure the contribution which persons resident within its jurisdiction shall make by way of taxes in return for the protection it affords them, by the value of the credits, choses in action, bonds or stocks which they may own (other than such as are exempted or protected from taxation under the Constitution and laws of the UntedUnited [sic] States) is a matter which concerns only the people of that State, and with which the Federal Government can not rightfully interfere."

It remains but to indicate the legitimate deductions and consequences of this decision, and point out some of the circumstances pertinent to the treatment of the case when it was before the United States Court.

In the first place, it decided that debts are property; a legitimate deduction from which is that the creation of debts creates property, and the extinguishment or payment of debts annihilates property; a conclusion which has not received the sanction of the judiciary, or