8o 4 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



twice, but whether there is anything within its jurisdiction that it 

 can tax at all. 



" Resort must be had to a legal fiction to draw this debt into 

 Connecticut. It does not appear from the record that even the evi- 

 dences of the debt, the bond and deed, were held in Connecticut." 



Under such circumstances, it is curious to note, as Judge Foster 

 especially pointed out, to what a singular and absurd hypothesis and 

 procedure the Connecticut authorities, as if conscious that they had 

 abandoned reason and were dealing with sentiment, had recourse 

 in order to get a basis and a warrant for their action. They first 

 assumed that there was an imaginary property, separate and distinct 

 from the material property; and then gave to such imaginary prop- 

 erty an imaginary situs, thus " going far into the domain of the 

 sentimental and spiritual for the purpose of taxation." Bishop 

 Berkeley, it will be remembered, held to the opinion that matter does 

 not exist, and that we only imagine that it exists; but it is not at all 

 probable that he ever hoped, when alive, that his views would be so 

 practically indorsed, and at so early a day, in the State of his literary 

 adoption. He would have made, moreover, a desirable tax assessor 

 and tax collector under the present Connecticut tax laws; for being 

 logical, even if he was sentimental, he would doubtless have been 

 willing to take the taxes in the pure product of the imagination. His 

 successors, however, were not only sentimental but illogical; for, 

 not content with assuming that the imaginary is the real, they tried 

 to do what the good bishop never would have sanctioned — namely, 

 take something out of nothing. 



But apart from these curious and novel politico-economic and 

 legal features, this Kirtland case involves constitutional questions 

 of the highest interest and importance — as much so, perhaps, as any 

 case ever brought to judicial arbitrament since the formation of the 

 Federal Constitution. 



The power of the State to tax the business of loaning money, 

 like the power to tax any business transacted within its limits, by way 

 of license or otherwise, whether the money be loaned to parties 

 within or without the State, is unquestionable. 



But this, however, can not be exercised by a State when the 

 business is done without the State, though it be done by citizens of 

 the State. Citizens of Connecticut transacting business in Illinois 

 must, therefore, be subject to the laws of Illinois, and not to the laws 

 of Connecticut. Again, if each State of the Federal Union has 

 dominion over the property and business transacted within its ter- 

 ritory for the purpose of taxation, that dominion must from its very 

 nature be absolute and exclude the dominion of any other State over 

 the same property and business. Again, the sovereignty of coequal 



