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256 WILLIAMS' CASE.
every hired clerk and factor of five shillings for every hundred
pounds of the yearly profit of such practice, wages, or factor-
age, (y) A tax was also imposed upon all free able-bodied un-
married adult males, under fifty years of age; (z) and similar
taxes were imposed upon other descriptions of persons. (a)
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 community.
It appears, then, from this article of the Declaration of Rights,
that it must be regarded as a constitutional duty of the General
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; (b) this constitutional rule cannot be so interpreted as to
require that the contribution of each citizen should be in exact ma-
thematical proportion to his actual worth in property; because to
keep all taxes so continually and exactly proportioned, would be
impossible; and therefore it can only be necessary that an assess-
ment should be made from time to time according to as close an
approximation to an exact proportion as, under all circumstances,
is entirely practicable, (e)
This general rule, if it had been suffered to stand unqualified,
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(y) February, 1777, ch, 22, s. 5 and 6.—(2) October, 1778, ch. 7, s, 48; Novem-
ber, 1779, ch. S5, s. 57; October, 1780, ch. 25, s. 62; November, 1781, ch. 4, s, 66;
November, 1782, ch. 6, s, 47; November, 1783, ch. 17, s, 3d; 1784, ch. 56, s. 38;
1785, ch. 83, s. 16.—(a) 1790, ch. 33; Egan v. Charles County Court, 3 H. & McH.
169.-~(b) Smith's Weal. Nations, b, 5, c. 2, pt. 2; Gibbon's Decl and Fall Rom.
Emp. ch. 17 — (c) 1785, ch. 33, s. 1.
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