362 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



owned in the State of New York, is not taxable to its owner there, 

 provided it is capable of and has a permanent situs away from the 

 owner or his domicile. 



The United States Supreme Court (Hayes vs. Pacific Mail Com- 

 pany, 17 Howard, 713) decided that the situs of a vessel for State 

 taxation is only at the port where it is registered, and not where 

 it may happen to be. 



In the case of The City of New Albany vs. Meekin (3 In- 

 diana Reports, 481), the defendant was a resident of New Albany, 

 and was assessed for personal property in respect to a steamboat 

 enrolled at Louisville, Kentucky, and which touched only occa- 

 sionally at New Albany. It was held that the tax was illegal, 

 the Supreme Court observing that " the only question we have 

 to consider is whether the boat or the defendant's share is within 

 the city." 



It is also an interesting circumstance that this legal controversy 

 concerning the situs of a ship for the purpose of taxation has its 

 almost the exact counterpart in the records of English law; case after 

 case having formerly come up before the English courts in which the 

 question involved was: Shall the ship or her owners be taxed at the 

 place of the vessel's registry, or at the domicile of her proprietors? 

 The ultimate decision was, that the only situs of a vessel for taxation 

 is the port of her registry, and this decision was recognized in prac- 

 tice until Parliament and the people arrived at the conclusion that it 

 was for the interest of the nation that ships should no longer be taxed 

 directly in any manner. 



The United States Supreme Court, in the case of the Northern 

 Central Railroad vs. Jackson (7 Wallace 262), also affirmed the 

 principle that two States can not tax at the same time the same prop- 

 erty, nor can a State tax property and interest lying beyond her 

 jurisdiction. The railroad corporation in question, extending from 

 Baltimore in Maryland to Sunbury in Pennsylvania, was the result 

 of the consolidation of four railroad companies, one incorporated by 

 the State of Maryland and three by the State of Pennsylvania. The 

 latter State imposed a tax of three mills per dollar of the principal 

 of each bond issued by said road, which tax the company, at their 

 office in Baltimore, deducted from the coupons of the bonds of said 

 consolidated road held by Jackson, an alien, resident in Ireland. 

 The court, by Mr. Justice Nelson, decided adversely to the tax, on 

 the ground that the bonds were issued upon the credit of the line of 

 the road, a portion of which was within the jurisdiction of the State 

 of Maryland, and that the security, bound and pledged for the pay- 

 ment of the bonds and of the interest on them, embraces the Mary- 

 land portion of the road equally with that portion situated in the 



