PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 653 



credits are a false quantity in ascertaining the sum of wealth which 

 is subject to taxation as property, and so far as that sum is attempted 

 to be increased by the addition of these credits, property based 

 thereon is not only merely fanciful, but necessarily the imposition 

 of an additional tax upon a portion of the property already once 

 taxed. The taxation thus imposed, nominally upon credits, having 

 resulted in the double taxation of money, the additional tax must 

 be paid by some one. And here all experience, as well as all set- 

 tled theories of finance, concur that it is not the lender who pays, 

 but the borrower. The borrower is the consumer; the interest that 

 he pays to the lender is the prime cost of the delay for which he has 

 contracted. If the Government, by the imposition of additional 

 taxes, increase the cost, the borrower, being the consumer, must 

 pay for it." 



The court, through Justice McKinstry (the Chief Justice's 

 opinion being in concurrence), enumerated, as follows, some of the 

 absurdities to which an attempt to include choses in action in the 

 definition of property would necessarily lead: 



" Supposing," he said, " that the necessities of Government re- 

 quired a tax of one hundred per cent on all values, or, what would 

 be the result of such a tax, an appropriation of all the property in 

 the State — it is plain that the State would receive no benefit from 

 evidences of debt due by some of her citizens to others, and payable 

 out of the tangible property which the State had already taken. 



" The Legislature may declare that a cause of action shall be 

 taxed, but a cause in action can not pay the tax; and this because 

 it has, and can have, no value independent of the tangible wealth 

 out of which it may be satisfied. 



" It may be possible in every case to show that the debtor has 

 paid the tax assessed to his creditor. But it admits of mathematical 

 demonstration — if other property in the State has been assessed 

 at its value — that the money which shall ultimately satisfy the 

 debt (if it ever is satisfied) has paid the tax. If it were practical 

 to assess all the property in the State at the same moment of time, 

 it would be clear to every mind that an assessment of a credit was 

 an attempt to transfer to it a value elsewhere assessed. If a debtor 

 was found to be the owner of one thousand dollars, and is assessed 

 for that sum, and his creditor is found to be the owner of his note 

 for one thousand dollars, and is assessed for a like sum; and if the 

 day after the visit of the assessor to the creditor the debtor shall 

 pay his note, it is clear that this same value has been twice taxed; 

 since the debtor has parted with his money, and received only 

 that which is certainly not taxable property in his hands, and which 

 can never afterward be assessed. When a debtor pays his debt, 



