PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. .805 



States involves a full recognition of the dominion and sovereignty of 

 all sister States; and hence section one, Article IV, of the Federal 

 Constitution requires that " full faith and credit shall be given to 

 the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of other States." 

 Each State, then, in entering the Federal Union, entered into a con- 

 tract of non-interference with the dominion and prerogatives of other 

 States; and it will not be disputed that the power of taxation is an 

 incident of sovereignty or dominion. The dominion, therefore, of 

 one State for the purpose of taxation over persons, property, busi- 

 ness, or the incidents of business, must exclude the dominion of other 

 States over the same persons, property, business, and incidents of 

 business at the same time. Neither in constitutional law in the 

 United States nor in mathematics can the same property, persons, 

 business, or incidents of business occupy two places and two sover- 

 eignties at the same time. Hence, the taxation by Connecticut of 

 credits, choses in action, bonds, notes, book accounts, verbal and 

 other contracts, the incidents of actual business transacted in Illinois, 

 must be in legal effect extraterritorial taxation of such business, and 

 so an infringement and violation of the sovereignty of Illinois; or 

 else it must be assumed that business does not include its incidents, 

 or the whole its parts. 



Furthermore, if Connecticut has the power of taxing extraterri- 

 torial contracts for the loan of money, she has the power to fix any 

 rate and to discriminate as to the States upon whose citizens the 

 burden shall fall; or she may adopt a rate that shall be prohibitory 

 on contracts made by her citizens with citizens of designated States, 

 or citizens of all the States, as her caprice may dictate. 



And in this way she may obstruct and to a great extent prevent 

 interstate commerce, which the United States Supreme Court in re- 

 peated instances (since the Kirtland case) has decided that the sepa- 

 rate State governments can not under the Federal Constitution do 

 either directly or indirectly. 



From these considerations, reasoning, and precedents the conclu- 

 sions of Judge Foster would seem to have been incontrovertible 

 namely, that " the plaintiff/ ' Kirtland, " was not liable to taxation " 

 in Connecticut " for debts owing to him in Illinois " ; and inf er- 

 entially that, although possibly warranted by the letter of the 

 statute, the act was an attempt on the part of Connecticut to exer- 

 cise extraterritorial dominion over persons, contracts, or business, 

 and was, therefore, unconstitutional and void. It would also seem 

 to be clear that if property in action (choses in action) is made by 

 fiction of law an entity, having a situs in one State separate from 

 the property which it represents in another State, an opportunity 

 for the grossest inconsistencies will be perpetrated, and the most 



