confine municipalities to the enforcement of the statute laws of Missouri. The bank in making the purchase relied on court decisions and was deceived, and the Supreme Court affirmed the deception.

The court holds, as the Virginia court and the Supreme Court of the United States holds, that the same statute which authorizes the tax-bills prohibits them. The court refer to The Central Land Company v. Laidley, 159 U. S. 103.

The Virginia statute made the Huntington deed valid when Mr. Huntington paid for the land and took the deed for it, relying on the statute and the decisions of the courts of Virginia. The Virginia statute prohibited that deed after it was made. The same statute that made the Huntington deed valid, prohibited it and made it void. And yet the Virginia statute did not impair the obligation of this contract (Huntington's warranty deed)!

This last Missouri decision teaches one important lesson to all people who are in business. You cannot safely rely on judicial decisions. The courts are not to be trusted. The old maxim, "Interest Reipublicae ut sit finis litium," has been changed to "Interest Reipublicae ut sit finis litium non," putting the most important word, "non," last, so that the memory may linger long on that which is most important.

Has the blind goddess of Justice become a streetwalking strumpet?

1

CHAPTER 15.

CONCLUSION.

In conclusion the writer would ask the propertyowner, the reader, the citizen, to reflect on the matters referred to in this book. The accumulations of a lifetime are at stake. The home of yourself, your family and children are at stake. That home may be taxed one hundred per cent of its value and sold to pay the cost of doing it a damage prohibited by the Constitution, and the courts can afford you no relief. If the property-owner make resistance in the courts or elsewhere, the modern law puts him in the disagreeable position of one who has received a large benefit from public work, and in refusing to pay for it he is despicable, contemptible and vile, to be shunned by all good (self-styled progressive) citizens. It is the stop-thief cry of the centuries. It is part and parcel of the divine right of kings. "The king can do no wrong.' The common council cannot by their acts damage private property for public use. Their determination that their public improvements benefit the citizen cannot be disputed, even when the proposed benefit is a damage ten times the amount of the cost. The Constitution as judicially interpreted declares the incendiary's torch a benefit.

The legislative power is always aggressive. It is the power which threatens to "Draw within its impetuous vortex all other powers of the government." Here our common councils have absolutely unlimited powers over the real property of the citizen. If they may under laws passed by constitutional authority, have and exercise this unlimited power over real property, they

may by legislative enactment have and exercise this unlimited power over personal property, and all other property unfortunately subjected to its power.

By an act of the Missouri Legislature, approved April 14, 1905 (Session Acts or Laws of Missouri 1905, pages 282-291), land may be taxed for a road to the extent of $100 per acre. This is merely one step further in the wrong direction.

tax.

There is absolutely no limit to the amount of the

A two hundred per cent local tax may be levied on the full value of land and a two hundred per cent tax on the full value of the benefit conferred without any violation of the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States. That amendment was not designed to secure such "delusive exactness." [Louisville and Nashville R. R. Co. v. Barber Asphalt Paving Co. (A. D. 1905), 197 U. S. 430, and cases cited on page 434.] The Kentucky statute referred to provided that "The courts in which suits may be pending shall make all corrections, rules and orders to do justice to all parties concerned." But the courts hold that they cannot make corrections of legislative enactments.

Some have said that the courts and judges are corrupt and vicious. I do not believe it. This assertion is a serious error. Courts and judges are and have been sincere and honest, and in consequence thereof the damage has been greater.

Sir William Blackstone has told us that the objects for the consideration of the laws of England are two fold: first, persons; second, things. The Supreme Court of the United States, at December term, A. D. 1856, in case of Dred Scott v. Sandford, 19 Howard 393 to 633, decided that a black person was not a person at all, but a mere thing. The black man had no

more capacity to sue than a horse or a sawlog or other inanimate object. This decision gave to any white man the right to call the roll of his slaves at the foot of Bunker Hill monument or in Illinois, notwithstanding the Constitution of Massachusetts and of Illinois had declared that black persons were persons and not things, and that slavery did not exist and should not exist. In 1834 Dred Scott, a Missouri slave, was taken to Illinois (he did not escape there) and remained there for two years. He was a slave notwithstanding the Constitution of Illinois prohibited slavery. We have the exact counterpart in Missouri and other States. Our Constitution prohibits damaging private property for public use without just compensation. And yet nearly every one of these States authorizes a local tax on damaged property (the damaging being expressly prohibited by the Constitution) to pay the cost of the forbidden damage. Notwithstanding this act (damaging) is prohibited, still courts imply a power to tax the damaged property for doing the prohibited act. Slavery existed in Illinois notwithstanding her Constitution prohibited it. Property can be damaged in the States notwithstanding the state Constitutions prohibit it. And the courts enforce the law of slavery and the law of valdalism and robbery alike, notwithstanding state constitutional prohibitions, however absolute such constitutional restrictions may be.

State legislatures and state courts seem to have had little difficulty in breaking through the cobweb chains of paper constitutions. Nine years after the decision was rendered in Dred Scott v. Sandford, the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States abolished slavery (in form at least) in all the United States. The fourteenth amendment followed

soon.

Our courts decided at an early day that legisla

tive divorces were unconstitutional. Such divorces impaired the obligation of contracts; they were retrospective in their operation and such legislative divorces were an exercise of judicial power by the Legislature in conflict with that provision of the Missouri Constitution that the powers of the government were divided into three distinct departments, each of which should be confided to a separate magistracy, and no person charged with the exercise of powers properly belonging to one department should exercise any powers properly belonging to either of the other departments, with very limited exceptions, and the exceptions strengthen in cases not excepted. We have seen the repeated attempts to overthrow the Constitution by repeated legislative divorces, the state Legislature claiming the unlimited powers of the English Parliament notwithstanding our constitutional restrictions and our judicial decisions. The Missouri Legislature for a long series of years defied the Constitution and the courts until the Missouri Constitution of 1865 in terms prohibited divorces by legislative act. It must be now left to the courts to be decided on notice and hearing and an opportunity to be heard.

The reader cannot fail to notice the long continued and persistent effort on the part of state legislatures and state courts to overthrow state constitutions and restrictions and substitute the English Constitution and the unlimited powers of the English Parliament.

On special tax-bills and municipal bonds no change can now be made in state Supreme Court decisions. The Constitution of the United States prevents any change of this state statute and this state Constitution by legislative act or judicial decision, or even an amendment of the state Constitution as to bonds or taxbills in force under the present state constitutions and