missioners, 44 Mich. 274, 6 N. W. Rep. 659; Davenport v. Railroad Co., 38 Iowa, 633; Tucker v. Ferguson, supra. If any particular property be not taxable, it is because it belongs to a class which by some law has been relieved of the burdens of taxation; and from the very necessities of the situation the power must be lodged somewhere to say whether or not-any specified piece of property belongs to any particular class, otherwise no assessment could ever be made. And a particular tract of property that belongs to a class that has been relieved of the burdens of taxation by express legislative enactment is just as free from such burden as the tract that belongs to the class that was never subject tothe burden, and the county would have just the same legal right to the money received from a tax-sale of the one tract as of the other, and, as we view it, the duty would devolve upon the assessor in each case,and in the one just as much as in the other, to decide, primarily, whether or not the respective tracts should be assessed. In Foster v. Van Wyck, 41 How. Pr. 493, the court says: “It can make no difference, in regard to the assessor’s jurisdiction, whether this immunity from taxation arises from state or national law. In either case the question of liability to taxation is to be determined by the assessors; and they have, of course, jurisdiction to decide it. It is equally a judicial decision in either case, having equal protection from liability for having decided erroneously.” Nor must we confound an erroneous decision of the assessor on a matter within his jurisdiction with a want of jurisdiction. The assessor is the first officer to act in the process of the collection of the public revenue. His jurisdiction depends upon the antecedent act of no official, The law fixes his jurisdiction, and for taxation purposes it is co-extensive with its geographical limits, and covers the whole subject-matter of assessments. Every tract of land within those limits must either be placed upon or omitted from the assessment roll, and the matter must in each instance be determined by the assessor.
The cases sometimes speak of the assessor as having no jurisdiction to assess exempt property; but this must always be received in connection with the further proposition that the assessor has the right, and it is his duty, to decide what does and
