If, now, there is any meaning in words, and if the authority of the United States Supreme Court in defining the powers and jurisdiction of the States is as absolute as is generally supposed, it is clearly evident that the first clause of the above-quoted opinion effectually establishes the unconstitutionality and illegality of the theory and practice of Massachusetts and other States, namely, that in virtue of jurisdiction over the person and domicile a State has a right to tax so much of the visible, tangible, personal property of its citizens—i. e., horses, cattle, stocks of goods, money, bullion, and the like—as may be without its territory and jurisdiction: the law of Massachusetts, for example, defining personal property for the purpose of taxation to be "goods, chattels, money, and effects, wherever they are."[1]
If it be objected that the court, by using the expression "in many cases," does not make its rule absolute and unqualified, the answer is that the exceptions, when understood, will be found to be of a character which proves and strengthens the rule, rather than antagonizes it. Thus, as has been already noticed, the United States Supreme Court has decided that the situs for taxation of vessels which move about on the high seas or navigable inland waters must be at the home port where they are owned and registered; and it also stands to reason that the situs of such property as railroad cars, or other chattels which as a condition of using are perpetually in transitu, in order to avoid duplicate taxation and conflicting statutes, must be taxed, if taxed at all, under the head of the franchise of the company or owners. But in all cases where fixity, or permanence are conditions of using, it may be unquestionably affirmed that the court intended to make no exception in its rule for determining where visible, tangible, personal property may be taxed, and where, also, it is of necessity exempted from taxation.
Taxation and Protection correlative.—It ought to be superfluous, but in view of existing opinions and practices it is nevertheless expedient to say that the reason of this rule is founded upon a circumstance alike conformable to law and common sense, which is that taxation and protection are correlative terms; or, in other words, according to the political theory of our governments, national and State, and, in fact, of every government claiming to be free, that taxes are the compensation which property pays to the State for protection; or, as Montesquieu, in his Spirit of Laws, has
- ↑ In Massachusetts, within the last half century, a citizen has been threatened with arrest and imprisonment for objecting to pay taxes in that State on goods located in a store in San Francisco and paying taxes thereon in the State of California. Bullion in the vaults of the Bank of England has also been taxed to citizens of Massachusetts as personal property within a comparatively recent period.
