Page:Fletcher v. Oliver.pdf/12

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300
CASES IN THE SUPREME COURT

Fletcher v. Oliver, sheriff, &c.
[December

Money, in this instance, is placed in the same class of adjuncts for building roads and highways that timber, stone, gravel or labor may be, and, as such, is not revenue, in the sense in which the word is used in the Constitution. The revenue there referred to was such as might be imposed for the support of the State Government, and the payment of its ordinary expenses.

There are many laws that provide for raising money by taxation that are not revenue laws. The law under which the city derives the power to tax the property within its limits, originated in the Senate. The law organizing schools, and permitting the levy of a tax for that specific purpose, originated in the Senate, and no one ever dreamed of calling them revenue laws.

Then, again, this tax does not depend on the law of 1868 alone for support, because the law of 1854—5 authorizes the same rate per cent. upon the taxable property of the entire county. The law of 1854—5 is not repealed, by implication or otherwise, and, in the event we should have held the law of 1868 void for either of the reasons urged, we should have been compelled to have sustained the levy of road tax under the law before mentioned.

The law of March 21, 1867, to which our attention has been called, as sustaining this levy of road tax, in the event the road law of 1868 should not be sustained, has no application to Pulaski county. The act simply amends chapter 149 of Gould's Digest, and the law, as there found, did not apply to the counties of Jackson, Crawford, Pope, Lafayette, Phillips, Crittenden, Monroe, Columbia and Pulaski.

It is not necessary to discuss what effect the repeal of the charter of the city of Little Rock might have had in the disposition of this case.

We are of opinion that the decree of the Chancellor should be affirmed, and it is so ordered.