State v. Cornwell

• Decision Date: 13 November 1893
• Citation: 18 S.E. 184,40 S.C. 26
• Parties: STATE et rel. MORSE v. CORNWELL et al., County Com'rs.
• Court: South Carolina Supreme Court

18 S.E. 184

40 S.C. 26

STATE et rel. MORSE v. CORNWELL et al., County Com'rs.

Supreme Court of South Carolina

November 13, 1893

Mandamus on relation of R. M. Morse against J. D. Cornwell and others as commissioners of York county, to levy a tax on Broad River township to pay coupons on bonds of said township. Writ denied.

Lord & Burke, for petitioner.

D. E Finley and Wm. B. McCaul, for respondents.

McIVER C.J.

This is an application addressed to this court in the exercise of its original jurisdiction for a mandamus to compel the respondents, as the corporate agents of Broad River township in York county, to levy a tax upon the taxable property of said township sufficient to pay certain past due coupons on bonds issued by respondents as such corporate agents, of which the relator is the bona fide holder. Inasmuch as there is but a single question presented for the determination of the court, we need not go into any detailed statement of the pleadings, but it will be sufficient for us to state the conceded facts and admitted propositions of law out of which the question arises which we are called upon to decide. It is conceded that the amount of the bonds here in question is the sum of $24,000, and, if the same is a valid debt of Broad River township, then such debt was incurred on the 22d day of December, 1888, on which day the act was passed purporting to fix such debt upon said township. It is likewise conceded that said township "is a municipal corporation or a political division of the said state, within the provisions of section 17, art. 9, of the constitution of the state of South Carolina." That constitutional provision, as may be seen by reference to the Acts of 1884, (18 St. 690,) reads as follows: "Any bonded debt hereafter incurred by any county, municipal corporation, or political division of this state shall never exceed eight per centum of the assessed value of all the taxable property therein." It is very obvious that the legislature had no power to fix upon this township any debt in excess of the limit prescribed by the constitutional provision just quoted; and hence, if the amount of $24,000, purporting to be fixed upon Broad River township by the act of 1888, above cited, was in excess of 8 per centum of "the assessed value of all the taxable property therein" at the time the act was passed, it follows necessarily that said act, in so far as it purported to fix such debt upon said township, was unconstitutional and void; for it is admitted in the argument--and properly admitted--that the time when the debt purports to have been contracted is the time to which reference must be had in ascertaining whether the constitutional limit has been exceeded. The inquiry, then, is, was the sum of $24,000 in excess of 8 per centum of the assessed value of all the taxable property in Broad River township on the 22d December 1888? It being conceded that the assessed value of all the taxable property in said township, as ascertained by the next preceding assessment which had been made in the early part of the year 1888, for the fiscal year of 1887-88, before the act purporting to create the debt was passed, amounted to $271,350, while the assessed value of all such property as ascertained by an assessment made in February, 1889, for the fiscal year 1888-89, after the passage of such act, amounted to $314,400, it is quite clear that, if the former assessment be taken as one of the elements of the calculation, the proposed debt exceeded the constitutional limit, while, if the latter assessment be adopted as one of the elements of the calculation, then there was no such excess. The real question, therefore, and the only one discussed in the argument, and the only one which we propose to decide, is, which of these two assessments should be properly taken as the basis of the calculation? In the first place, it seems to us that there is an insuperable practical obstacle in the way of adopting the assessment made after the debt purports to have been contracted, as...