Directors of Poor v. School Directors

• Decision Date: 03 February 1862
• Citation: 42 Pa. 21
• Parties: Directors of the Poor of Schuylkill County <I>versus</I> School Directors of North Manheim Township.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

42 Pa. 21

Directors of the Poor of Schuylkill County versus School Directors of North Manheim Township.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

February 3, 1862.

ERROR to the Common Pleas of Schuylkill county.

George H. Clay, for plaintiff in error, contended that the court erred, 1. In not holding the assessment to be void. 2. In not holding any statute now in force authorizing one municipal corporation to tax the property of another to be unconstitutional; and 3. In not holding the assessment of the property of the directors of the poor made by the school board to be unconstitutional per se.

Every government has the right to protect and preserve itself. To do so, it must provide for and maintain the poor. The manner of doing so is by taxation. The Commonwealth provided, by a general statute in 1836, a system of laws whereby the support of the poor was made a local municipal charge, and the Commonwealth was relieved from directly supporting them. The townships and boroughs were districted by that system, and each made liable for the support of its own poor, except in those counties where the borough and township liabilities, by special legislation, were consolidated into a county liability.

Has the school district of the township of North Manheim the right to assess this property of the directors with a school tax? Unless there be a statute making the property liable for this school tax, the assessment for such purpose is void. The property assessed belongs to a municipal body; not to a private corporation or individual; and the assessment is made by another municipal body. The rule of law is that a municipal corporation is not included in the general words of a statute unless specially named: Bl. Com., Vol. 1, 262; 1 Bishop Crim. Law 86; Bac. Abridg., Vol. 3, 407; Commonwealth v. Johnson et al., 6 Barr 136; Bagley v. Wallace, 16 S. & R. 245; Commonwealth v. Baldwin, 1 Watts 54; McKeehan v. Commonwealth, 3 Barr 151; City of Erie v. Knapp, 5 Casey 173; Haehnlen v. Commonwealth, 1 Harris 617; Piper v. Singer, 4 S. & R. 354; The Williamsport and Elmira Railroad Co. v. Commonwealth. 9 Casey 288; Schaffer v. Cadwallader, 12 Casey 126; People v. Gilbert, 18 Johns. R. 227; 2 Wallace, Jr., C. C. R. 72; Troutman v. May, 9 Casey 459; The County of Susquehanna v. Dean et al., 9 Casey 131; Williams v. Controllers, 6 Harris 275; Wilson v. Commissioners of Huntingdon County, 7 W. & S. 197, 199; 8 Casey 382; Northern Liberties v. St. John's Church, 1 Harris 107. Nor are they governed by the same rules of law by which the people in their individual capacity are governed. When they are, it is the exception and not the rule. Nor, for the same reasons, does their real estate, which they are authorized to hold for public use, belong to that class of things real which are subjected to the triennial assessment, which was only intended to include the property, real and personal, of citizens in their individual capacity, and of corporations other than those of a municipal character.

If the directors must pay the tax, they draw on the county fund for that purpose. This fund is the poor tax, which is assessed and collected by authority of the county commissioners, and appropriated by the directors as often as their purposes require it. If any portion of it is applied towards the maintenance of the schools in North Manheim district, it is a perversion of the purpose for which it was paid. The tax-payers of the county are obliged to pay a school tax to support the schools in the boroughs and townships where they live and where their property is situated, but are not obliged to pay collectively a tax collected under the name of a poor tax towards supporting the schools in that particular district. See Piper v. Singer, 4 S. & R. 354; Sharpless et al. v. The Mayor, &c., of Philadelphia, 9 Harris 147, and the authorities therein cited on the subjects of taxation.

F. W. Hughes, for defendant in error.—The Act of 4th April 1831, creating the Schyulkill county almshouse, authorizes the plaintiffs in error to hold real estate to any extent,...