Coates v. Campbell
Citation | 37 Minn. 498 |
Court | Supreme Court of Minnesota (US) |
Decision Date | 08 December 1887 |
Parties | JOSEPH COATES <I>vs.</I> JOSEPH CAMPBELL and others. |
Hall & Kirkpatrick, for appellants.
Taylor & Calhoun, for respondent.
An act of the legislature approved February 25, 1887, (Sp. Laws, 1887, c. 137,) entitled "An act to authorize the village of Sauk Rapids, in the county of Benton, to issue bonds in aid of the improvement of the Mississippi river at said Sauk Rapids," provided: * * * * * *
There is no principle of constitutional law better settled than that taxes cannot be imposed for a private purpose. State v. Foley, 30 Minn. 350, (15 N. W. Rep. 375,) and cases cited. "The right to tax depends on the ultimate use, purpose, and object for which the fund is raised, and not on the nature or character of the person or corporation whose intermediate agency is to be used in applying it." Sharpless v. Mayor, 21 Pa. St. 147, 169. It is upon this proposition that courts sustain the imposition of taxes for the purpose of constructing railroads; for although railroad companies are, so far as their rights of property are concerned, private corporations, yet railroads are public highways, constructed and maintained for public use, and which the public have a right to use; so that in this case it is not conclusive, as to the right to tax, that the title to the waterpower to be improved is or will be in some private person or corporation, or that the village is not to have any direct control over the management of it. As it is entirely manifest that the general and chief purpose of the act is to improve the...
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State ex rel. Orr v. City of New Orleans
...vs. John M. Henderson, State Auditor. Colorado Supreme Court, November, 1882. 18 Vol. Lawyer's Annotated Reports, 399, 400. Coates vs. Campbell, 37 Minn. 498. In discussion of questions of law we are not authorized to act upon our own ideas of what should or should not be either in the Cons......
- Coates v. Campbell