See how this law operates on corner lots. We proceed on the lines already suggested. Take thirty-two corners. This would be eight blocks on each side. Improve sixteen of these corner lots with a sixteen-hundred dollar house. Then we have

16 houses at $1,600, equal to

.$25,600

16 lots improved at $400, each equal to ... 6,400 16 lots unimproved at $400, each equal to .. 6,400 Total value

.$38,400

If the tax-bills are $1,200 on each lot the contractor comes out even. The owners of the vacant lots lose their lots with original value and added value, and the owners of the houses, costing $1,600 each, lose their houses worth $25,600, and their lots worth $400 each, equal to $6,400. The contractor lost $800 on each vacant lot of the sixteen, and he made up his loss by the sixteen houses at $1,600 each.

Take lot 56, Windsor. Land is assessed at $720, with all benefits added, the special taxes being $1,950. If the owner puts up a house worth $1,230, then the land ($720) and house ($1,230) equal $1,950. The taxbill holder gets one hundred per cent of the original value of the land and one hundred per cent of the increased value of the land and one hundred per cent of the value of the houses and the public get the highly costly street for nothing. "Tell me whether this be theft or no?"

In the actual case above cited, and the supposed case, the property was not damaged. There was some "benefit," but the original value of the land and the houses and the benefit all added together were less than the tax-bills.

The question is one solely of power. If the power to do the forbidden thing exists, then the question is settled. To say that the power is abused is to beg the question. A power that does not exist cannot be

abused. Every legislative enactment made without constitutional power or against a prohibition, is and ought to be void.

We have seen that a $2,750 damage to Mrs. Smith's lot was a three-hundred-dollar benefit to her and her lot.

If they will only hang a few property-owners, the benefits to such property-owners so hung would be amply sufficient to pay off the national and state debts.

CHAPTER 11.

FURTHER CHANGES.

Within the last ten years further fundamental changes have occurred in the law of local taxation. Local benefit was formerly regarded as the sole ground or authority for the local tax. The Missouri Supreme Court state the principles on which this tax is founded, through Judge Leonard, in Lockwood et al. v. St. Louis 24 Mo. 20 (A. D. 1856), in a suit to enjoin the collection of a tax of one-half of one per cent to build sewers in a portion of St. Louis, under an act of the Legislature of Missouri. After observing that these taxes prevailed under the English Law, the court say:

"Their intrinsic justice strikes every one. If an improvement is to be made, the benefit of which is local, it is but just that the property benefited should bear the burden. While the few ought not to be taxed for the benefit of the whole, the whole ought not to be taxed for the few. A single township in a county ought not to bear the whole county expenses, neither ought the whole county to be taxed for the benefit of a single township; and the same principles require that taxation for a local object, beneficial only to a portion of a town or city, should be upon that part only. General taxation for a mere local purpose is unjust; it burdens those who are not benefited, and benefits those who are exempt from the burden.'

A local tax which was only a general benefit was unconstitutional. When the Constitution was changed so as to prohibit damaging private property for public use as well as taking, the tax became valid if it was

for work which occasioned a damage. The special, peculiar, exceptive benefit ceased to be necessary to the constitutional validity of the tax. A general benefit ceased to render the tax unconstitutional. If there was a general damage, the tax was constitutional. Now the latest determinations are that the courts can not inquire into the question. The legislative determination is conclusive.

"Just compensation for taking as well as damaging private property for public use shall be ascertained by a jury or board of commissioners." In requiring a jury a judicial proceeding seems to be aimed at but we now proceed to show by what steps this portion of the Constitution of Missouri is unconstitutional according to the Constitution of Missouri, and courts and juries and commissioners are dispensed with. The whole power is in the Legislature (common council of cities) and the legislative determination is conclusive. This determination ought to be judicial and when such duty is devolved on the Legislature it is made to try to accomplish impossibilities.

Let us notice some inconsistencies into which we are driven by this theory of the conclusiveness of this legislative determination of benefits, both as to fact and amount.

In every State of the Union, streets, avenues and highways may be improved at the expense of the abutting property, even if the improvement be no benefit to the property taxed, or even a damage forbidden by the Constitution. In such case, notwithstanding the positive prohibition against the work occasioning the damage, the damaged property may be taxed to the entire extent of the whole value of the land and all buildings thereon.

Look at the inconsistencies. It will plainly appear in mathematics that the tea tax of the Revolution was

(0) zero and this tax infinity 8. We have the relation between zero and infinity.

In State of Missouri ex rel. v. Leffingwell et al., 54 Mo. 458 at 473, Wagner, Judge (in an opinion concurred in by Judges Vories and Adams, Judge Napton not sitting and Judge Sherwood absent), says:

"In the construction of the Constitution I am unwilling to apply to it those elastic principles which will make it extend any required length to accomplish an end or purpose. Unless some regard is paid to the injunctions of our organic law, written constitutions of government will be regarded as of no value and the experiment of setting a boundary to capricious and arbitrary power will be a complete failure." Again continuing, the same judge says: "Nothing is better settled than that special taxation for objects that are general and public is illegal." Again, page 475: "The Constitution has wisely erected a barrier against this exorbitant power, and there is a time in the tide of this special taxation when it must be said, thus far shalt thou go and no farther."

"Local assessments are constitutional only when imposed to pay for local improvements conferring special benefits." These are the words of the same judge in the same opinion, almost in the same sentence. It was certainly intended to be affirmed by the court that there was then (in the year A. D. 1873) a constitutional barrier against local taxation. Where is it now? We had it in 1873. What has become of it? What clause or provision in the Constitution of Missouri in 1875 removed this barrier? Was it ever intended to change the language of the court so as to read thus: "Local assessments are constitutional only when imposed to pay for local improvements conferring special damages." If by fraud, accident or mistake the "If work for which a special tax-bill is issued should be a