368 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



If, now, there is any meaning in words, and if the authority of 

 the United States Supreme Court in defining the powers and juris- 

 diction of the States is as absolute as is generally supposed, it is 

 clearly evident that the first clause of the above-quoted opinion 

 effectually establishes the unconstitutionality and illegality of the 

 theory and practice of Massachusetts and other States, namely, that 

 in virtue of jurisdiction over the person and domicile a State has a 

 right to tax so much of the visible, tangible, personal property of its 

 citizens i. e., horses, cattle, stocks of goods, money, bullion, and the 

 like as may be without its territory and jurisdiction: the law of 

 Massachusetts, for example, defining personal property for the pur- 

 pose of taxation to be " goods, chattels, money, and effects, wherever 

 they are." * 



If it be objected that the court, by using the expression "in 

 many cases," does not make its rule absolute and unqualified, the 

 answer is that the exceptions, when understood, will be found to be 

 of a character which proves and strengthens the rule, rather than 

 antagonizes it. Thus, as has been already noticed, the United States 

 Supreme Court has decided that the situs for taxation of vessels 

 which move about on the high seas or navigable inland waters must 

 be at the home port where they are owned and registered; and it 

 also stands to reason that the situs of such property as railroad cars, 

 or other chattels which as a condition of using are perpetually in 

 transitu, in order to avoid duplicate taxation and conflicting statutes, 

 must be taxed, if taxed at all, under the head of the franchise of the 

 company or owners. But in all case3 where fixity, or permanence 

 are conditions of using, it may be unquestionably affirmed that the 

 court intended to make no exception in its rule for determining where 

 visible, tangible, personal property may be taxed, and where, also, it 

 is of necessity exempted from taxation. 



Taxation and Protection correlative. It ought to be super- 

 fluous, but in view of existing opinions and practices it is neverthe- 

 less expedient to say that the reason of this rule is founded upon a 

 circumstance alike conformable to law and common sense, which is 

 that taxation and protection are correlative terms; or, in other 

 words, according to the political theory of our governments, na- 

 tional and State, and, in fact, of every government claiming to be 

 free, that taxes are the compensation which property pays to the 

 State for protection; or, as Montesquieu, in his Spirit of Laws, has 



* In Massachusetts, within the last half century, a citizen has been threatened with 

 arrest and imprisonment for objecting to pay taxes in that State on goods located in a store 

 in San Francisco and paying taxes thereon in the State of California. Bullion in the vaults 

 of the Bank of England has also been taxed to citizens of Massachusetts as personal prop- 

 erty within a comparatively recent period. 



