Pray v. The Northern Liberties

• Decision Date: 01 January 1850
• Citation: 31 Pa. 69
• Parties: Pray versus The Northern Liberties.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

Page 69

31 Pa. 69

Pray versus The Northern Liberties.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

ERROR to the District Court of Philadelphia.^*

C. W. Brooke, for the plaintiff in error.—The Act 3d February 1824, requires all unpaid taxes to be registered in the office of the county commissioners, in order to create a lien. The demurrer admits that the provisions of this Act have been disregarded by the defendants in error, in the present case. The Act 16th April 1840, gave a more efficient remedy for the recovery of these claims, but did not dispense with the requisites of the prior acts: Commissioners of Spring Garden's Appeal, 8 W. & S. 444; Pennock v. Hoover, 5 Rawle 291, 315.

Brightly, for defendants in error.—These claims are not taxes, because not imposed for any public purpose, but upon the owners of property, on their own application, and for their benefit exclusively: Sharp v. Speir, 4 Hill 82; Matter of the Mayor of New York, 11 Johns. 77; Bleecker v. Ballou, 3 Wend. 363; Act 16th April 1840, P. L. 412; Act 19th April 1843, Purd. Dig. 432; Act 16th April 1845, Ibid. 773, 1114; Act 11th March 1846, Ibid. 1116. The only case in which these claims are spoken of as taxes is Pennock v. Hoover, 5 Rawle 291: the learned judge who delivered the opinion of the court, in that case, does not appear to have noticed the distinction between taxes and assessments for street improvements, and speaks of them as taxes; but this was not the point decided.

The opinion of the court was delivered by COULTER, J.

This is a claim filed by the Commissioners of the Northern Liberties under the Act of 1840, for paving, &c. That Act seems fully to cover and protect the case of the commissioners. It is of no consequence that the claim existed before the passage of the act. The claim was undoubtedly good. The Act of 1840 only facilitated and enlarged the remedy; it did not create the right. The owner or reputed owner is named in the claim filed, the property sufficiently described, so as to identify it to a reasonable intendment. The writ of scire facias issued on the claim is served as the law directs. The assessment or charge for paving was not a tax, either technically speaking, nor according to the purview of the Acts of Assembly on the subject. A tax is generally understood to mean the imposition of a duty or impost for the support of government. In that sense it is understood all the world over, as contradistinguished from a mere municipal or corporate charge for the...