corporations or individuals, hence that the proposed aid is unconstitutional, as repugnant to said section. The courts of this country, and of all countries where constitutional liberty exists, agree with the elementary writers upon the science of government that it is essential to the validity of a tax that it be laid for a public purpose. Difficulty has frequently arisen in discriminating between public and private objects; but where the object is primarily to foster private enterprises, and the only benefit to be derived by the public is incidental and secondary, the tax will be annulled by the courts as an abuse of the legislative prerogative. In the first instance the duty devolves upon the legislative branch of the government to determine whether a proposed tax is or is not for a public purpose; and courts are loth to interpose and declare any tax unlawful, and will only do so in case of a palpable disregard of the wise limitations, express and implied, restricting the power of taxation. But where the legislature assumes, in the guise of taxation, to compel A. to advance his private means to aid B. in the prosecution of a purely private enterprise, the courts will not hesitate to perform the duty of declaring such tax void, as subversive of fundamental and vested individual rights, and will do so even in cases where there is no express constitutional inhibition. The power of confiscation does not exist in the legislature. The cases cited below are but a few of the numberless cases which have applied these principles to statutes imposing pretended taxes. Association v. Topeka, 20 Wall. 655; Bank v. City of Iola, 2 Dill. 353; City of Parkersburg v. Brown, 106 U. S. 487, 1 Sup. Ct. Rep. 442; Cole v. City of LaGrange, 113 U. S. 1, 5 Sup. Ct. Rep. 416; Allen v. Jay, 60 Me. 124; Lowell v. Boston, 111 Mass. 453; State v. Osawkee Tp., 14 Kan. 422; Coates v. Campbell, (Minn.) 35 N. W. Rep. 366; Cooley, Const. Lim. (marg.) p. 487; Cooley, Tax’n, (2d Ed.) pp. 55, 126.
Under these authorities, the test to be applied to the seed-grain statute is this: Is the tax provided for in the statute laid for a public purpose? If this question is answered in the negative, the statute must be declared null and void, without reference to § 185 of the state constitution, to which the attention of the court has been particularly directed. The statute makes
