WILLIAMS' CASE.—3 BLAND. 267

this pauper exemption, without apparently doing violence to the
constitutional rule of equality, has been extended, in some coun-
ties, to those whose property was not assessed to one hundred dol-
lars, or to three hundred dollars. 1817, oh. 41 and 49. The first
General Assembly of the Republic laid a tax upon every person
having any office of profit of five shillings in the hundred pounds
of the annual profits of such office; and also a tax upon every per-
son practising law, or physic, and upon * every hired clerk
and factor of five shillings for every hundred pounds of the 256
yearly profit of such practice, wages, or factorage. February. 1777,
ch. 22, s. 5 and 6. A tax was also imposed upon all free able-bodied
unmarried adult males, under fifty years of age; October. 1778. ch.
7, s. 48; November, 1779, ch. 35, s. 57; October, 1780, ch. 25, s. 62;
November. 1781, ch. 4, s. 66; November, 1782, ch. 6, s. 47; Novem-
ber, 1783, ch. 17, s. 35; 1784, ch. 56. s. 38; 1785, ch. 83, s. 16.
and similar taxes were imposed upon other descriptions of per-
sons. 1790, ch. 33; Egan v. Charles County Court, 3 H. & McH.
169.

In what light are such taxes to be regarded? Are they to be
considered as poll, or capitation taxes, or taxes upon property, or
upon wages or profits? or can they be considered as falling within
any of the restrictions of this Article? The persons on whom these
taxes were imposed, certainly could not be deemed paupers; yet
the law itself, directing the assessment, impliedly admits, that it
was not a contribution of their proportion of public taxes accord-
ing to their actual worth in property; nor is it intimated, in
any of the Acts by which they were imposed, that those taxes
were imposed with a political view for the benefit of the com-
munity.

It appears then, from this Article of the Declaration of Rights,
that it must be regarded as a constitutional duty of the Genera!
Assembly so to lay all taxes as that they shall bear upon each
person in exact proportion to his actual worth in real or personal
property; but it is presumed, that this, rule extends only to such
taxes as may be laid to raise a revenue to the State, not to assess-
ments for mere county or local purposes. A land tax assessed
according to a general valuation, however equal it may be at first,
must soon become unequal; and as to prevent its becoming so
would require the constant and painful attention of the government
to all the variations in the condition of every different farm in the
country; Smith's Weal. Nations, b. 5, c. 2, pt. 2; Gibbon's Decl, and
Fall Rom. Emp. ch. 17. This constitutional rule cannot be so in-
terpreted as to require that the contribution of each citizen
should be in exact mathematical proportion to his actual worth in
property; because to keep all taxes so continually and exactly pro-
portioned, would be impossible; and therefore it can only be neces-
sary that an assessment should be made from time to time accord-