268 WILLIAMS' CASE.—3 BLAND.

ing to as close an approximation to an exact proportion as, under
all circumstances, is entirely practicable. 1785, ch. 33, s. 1.

This general ruie, if it had been suffered to stand unqualified,
* would certainly have restrained the General Assembly from

257rom any practicable degree of equality of taxation
for any purpose whatever; but there has been engrafted upon it an
excepting clause, which declares, that "fines, duties, or taxes, may
properly and justly be imposed or laid with a political view for the
good government and benefit of the community." No exception can
be allowed to have the same extent as the rule itself. Exceptions
merely qualify the rule iu.soine of its operations, or take from
under it some specified cases. This exception does nothing more
than limit the operation of the general restriction upon the right
• to impose taxes; it allows of a departure from the rule no other-
wise than in the imposition of taxes. Fines, duties, and taxes,
may be laid, it is said, with a political view for the benefit of the
community. A citizen may have a fine imposed upon him as a
punishment for his misdemeanor or crime; a duty may be im-
posed as a means of insuring good conduct, and in aid of the
police, as in the form of a duty for a license to keep a tavern, to
retail spirituous liquors, to keep a bilHard table, &c.; a treble tax
may be imposod with a political view, as upon non-jurors during a
war, &c.; March, 1778, ch. 15; June, 1778, ch. 9; and to prevent
altercation about what should be deemed a money bill, it is declared
by the Constitution, "that no bill imposing duties or customs for
the mere regulation of commerce, or inflicting fines for the refor-
mation of morals, or to enforce the execution of the laws, by which
an incidental revenue may arise, shall be accounted a money bill."
Const. Art. 11; 3 Hatsell's Precedents, 104.

But all these expressions relate to the imposition of taxes, not
to an exemption from taxation. There is nothing in these clauses,
nor any thing in the whole of either Article which authorizes the
General Assembly to exempt any private property from taxation,
or to exonerate any person, natural or artificial, from contributing
his or its proportion of the public taxes according to his or its
actual worth in property: nor is there any thing in any part of the
Declaration of Rights, or in the Constitution and Form of Go-
vernment of the State which admits of such an exemption in any
manner or form whatever.

The English statute, passed in the year 1692, for the laying of

a general tax, embraced all property of every description, real and

personal, ready money and debts, as well as the shares of the New

* River Waterworks, and the shares of stock held by individ-

255 uals in other companies. The assessment upon land was
made, not upon its capital value, but at the rate of four shillings
in the pound of its annual rent, and that which did not rent for
twenty shillings a year, was exempted from taxation. 4 W. & M.