266 WILLIAMS' CASE.—3 BLAND.

therefore a few remarks as to their nature; and a cursory view of
the manner in which they have been observed and applied, may
throw much light upon the matter now undei consideration.

A poll tax upon slaves is altogether different from a poll tax
upon freemen. The latter is paid by the persons upon whom it is
imposed; the former by a different set of persons. The latter is
either altogether arbitrary, or altogether unequal, and in most
cases is both the one and the other; the former, though in some
respect unequal, different slaves being of different values, is in no
respect arbitrary. Every master who knows the number of his
own slaves, knows exactly, what he has to pay. Those different
taxes however, being called by the same name, have been often
considered * as of the same nature. A tax of so much a
255 head upon every slave is properly a tax upon the profits of
a certain species of stock employed in agriculture; and as the
greater part of the slave owners in Maryland are both cultivators
and owners of land, the final payment of such a tax would fall
upon them in their quality of land owners without any retribution.
Smith's Weal. Nations, b. 5, c. 2, pt. 2. A poll tax of forty pounds
of tobacco on persons, called the assessment of forty per poll, was
laid here under the Provincial Government, for the support of the
clergy of the then established church, upon all male residents,
and upon all female slaves, and free female negroes and mulattoes
above sixteen years of age, except slaves adjudged by the County
Court to be past labor. 1702, ch. 1, s. 3; 1715, eh. 15, s. 5; 1725.
ch. 4; 1763, ch. 18, s. 23 and 81. And besides this tax of forty
per poll, there was also a poll tax imposed upon all the same de-
scription of inhabitants; 1704, ch. 34; 1715, oh. 15, s. 5; 1754, ch.
9; 2 Bozman's His. Maryl. 204; and at times upon bachelors, 1756,
ch. 5; 2 W. & M. c. 6, s. 11, to raise a revenue for the State. It
is sufficiently evident however, that all kinds of poll taxes upon
free persons must be considered as having been denounced and
totally abolished by this Article. 1 Humc's Essays. Exper. 8 of
Taxes; 1 Madison's Papers, 509.

Under the Provincial Government, poor people who received
alms from the county, were enempted from taxation. 1715, ch. 15.
s. 5. Such class of persons, it is evident,, must necessarily be deemed
paupers within the meaning of the second clause of this Article.
In other respects, however, it seems that the term pauper was not
found to be altogether free from ambiguity; and therefore, the
Legislature enacted, that all those whose property should not be
valued above ten pounds, afterwards, forty dollars, should be de-
clared paupers and not charged with any tax. November, 1781,
ch. 4, s. 68; November, 1782, ch. 6, s. 49; November, 1783, ch.
17, s. 36; 1784, ch. 56, s. 40; 1785, ch. 83, s. 17; 1792, ch. 71, s. 25;
1803, ch. 92, s. .18; 1812, ch. 191, s. 16; 1829, ch. 106, s. 6. But
where the tax has been confined to county and special purposes,