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WILLIAMS' CASE. 257
would certainly have restrained the General Assembly from depart-
ing from any practicable degree of equality of taxation for any pur-
pose 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 in some 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 billiard table, &c.; a treble tax
may be imposed with a political view, as upon non-jurors during a
war, &e.; (d) 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 com-
merce, or inflicting fines for the reformation of morals, or to en-
force the execution of the laws, by which an incidental revenue
may arise, shall be accounted a money bill.' (e)
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
(d} March, 1778, ch. 15; June, 1778, ch. 9.-~(e) Const art, 11; 3 Hatsell's Pre-
cedents, 104.
33 v.3
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