turbed without indisputable proof of the injustice thereof; the principle of re adjudicata ought to apply to this claim.

It may be added that taxes legally assessed are a charge npon the land taxed, and it is in the nature of a proceeding in rem, and that under the laws of Washington Territory the remedy to be pursued in the collection of taxes upon the refusal of the owner of the lands is by sale of the lands subject to such taxes; and in case no sale can be effected, it is the duty of the county to purchase the lands for the amount of the delinquent taxes, (see section 20, page 335 of Laws of Washington Territory, 1854.) In this case, however, the company were adjudged by the commissioners to have no legal title, and in their award were directed to convey to the United States no title, but all their possessory rights and claims without any covenants of warrantee or title whereby every lien and charge held by the United States or any of its Territories became extinguished by merge in its own title.

It is therefore insisted that the said proviso does not and should not defeat the payment of the money appropriated for the fulfillment of the obligations assumed under the provisions of said treaties, and that a refusal to pay such award would be a violation of one of the most solemn forms of obligations entered into by one government with another.

As to that portion of the bill rendered and filed with the Secretary of State claiming $34,243 25 as penalties for the non-payment of said taxes, it is only necessary to direct attention to the proviso in said appropriation act, which provides that all taxes legally assessed and still unpaid shall be extinguished by the said company, or the amount of such taxes shall be withheld. The penalties are no portion of the taxes assessed, and therefore not embraced in the terms of such proviso; it is proper, however, to add, in connection with this branch of the case, the following narration of facts: The company having, as heretofore stated, for several years paid the taxes assessed against their lands, although protesting and insisting that there was no legal authority for such assessment for the purpose of having a judicial determination of such rights. In the year 1859, the company appeared before the board of county commissioners of Pierce County and objected to the excessive valuation and to the right to tax at all, desiring a judicial examination of the question of the liabil ities of the lands that had been in their occupation and possession in 1846 to be assessed to them for taxation. The objection was overruled, and the tax was ordered to be levied upon such lands at a valuation of $1 per acre. From this order an appeal was taken to the district court of Washington Territory and there affirmed, from whence the cause was taken to the supreme court of the Territory, in which court the order of the county commissioners was affirmed in the year 1862. From this judgment a writ of error was presented to the Supreme Court of the United States, which court, at its December term, 1867, without any decision upon its merits, dismissed the writ of error on account of a defect in the writ. In the mean time an injunction was granted enjoining the collection of any taxes that might be assessed against the lands, which suit was continued, by the mutual consent of all parties, until the question of the right of taxation so raised should be determined. In the taxes for which the claim is made are those claimed to have been assessed in 1859, and since up to and including the year 1869, the year in which the commissioners made their award, before whom the company urged the same question upon the taxes they had paid prior to the year 1859. The parties having failed to obtain the decision of the Supreme Court upon that point, therefore, so long as the proceeding was pending, there could be no return made of taxes as delinquent, and the penalties charged could not attach. It is evident that the payment of taxes was all that was contemplated originally by Congress. It would, under the circumstances, be unconscionable to compel the payment of more than the taxes as legally assessed, and there is no rule of construction which can construe a statute providing for the payment of one sum to include other sums.

WASHINGTON, May 1, 1871.

SIR: We have the honor to inclose certified statement of the amount of taxes due from the Puget Sound Agricultural Company to Pierce County, in Washington Territory. By the act of Congress appropriating money to pay the balance due said company, the amount of taxes due by said company is to be withheld to meet such indebtedness. We respectfully request to be notified of your action in the premises. Mr. Poland's address is St. Johnsbury, Vermont; that of Mr. Garfielde, for the present, Olympia, Washington Territory.

With great respect, your obedient servants,

S. GARFIELDE, LUKE P. POLAND, Attorneys for Pierce County.

Hon. HAMILTON FISH,

Secretary of State.

Statement of delinquent taxes due Pierce County, Washington Territory, by the Puget Sound Agricultural Company, on 161,000 acres of land, from the year 1839

to 1869, inclusive.

No. 239.

Mr. Akerman to Mr. Fish.

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE,

August 7, 1871. (Received August 9.) · SIR: Your letter of the 1st instant presents a question arising under the act of February 21, 1871, making appropriations for the consular and diplomatic expenses of the Government for the year ending June 30, 1872, and for other purposes. The last of the appropriations in that act is as follows:

The pay to the government of Great Britain and Ireland, the second and last installment of the amount awarded by the commissioners under the treaty of July one, eighteen hundred and sixty-three, in satisfaction of the claims of the Hudson's Bay and of the Puget Sound Agricultural Company, three hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars in gold coin: Provided, That before payment shall be made of that portion of the above sum awarded to the Puget Sound Agricultural Company, all taxes legally assessed upon any of the property of said company covered by said award, before the same was made, and still unpaid, shall be extinguished by said Puget Sound Agricultural Company; or the amount of such taxes shall be withheld by the Government of the United States from the sum hereby appropriated. (16 U. S. Stat., 419.)

Attorneys for Pierce County, Washington Territory, have transmitted to you a certificate of John Latham, auditor of Pierce County, Washington Territory, under the seal of the commissioner's court of that county, that a certain annexed paper is a true and correct transcript of the delinquent tax-rolls so far as relates to the taxes of the Puget Sound Agricultural Company of Pierce County, Washington Territory, with the percentage added thereto according to law, as fully and as amply as the same appears of record in my office. The paper annexed purports to be a statement of delinquent taxes due to Pierce County, Washington Territory, by the Puget Sound Agricultural Company, on one hundred and sixty-one thousand acres of land, from the year 1859 to 1869, inclusive. These taxes are distributed under the heads of county tax, school tax, territorial tax, and road tax, the whole amounting to $27,062 64; and there are additions of various percentages, running from twenty-five per cent. on the tax of 1869 to two hundred and seventy-five per cent. upon the tax of 1859, raising the total to the sum of $61,305 22. No explanation is given in the certificate or annexed paper of the reason for these additions. But it is probable that they are claimed as due for the delinquency of the tax payer.

You request my opinion as to whether the law requires the retention in the Treasury of the amount of the said original taxes and of the additions thereto.

The appropriation above quoted is in fulfillment of a stipulation in the treaty of July 1, 1863, which, after providing for a decision of the claims of the company by commissioners, engages in the fourth article that the sums awarded shall be paid in two installments, within specified times, "without any deduction whatever." (13 U. S. Stat., 652.) If this proviso is to cause the payment of a less sum than the amount awarded, it will produce a breach of the treaty, and make the country responsible to the foreign power for such a breach. A statute which may have such consequences should receive the strictest construction allowable under established rules. Not denying the right of Congress to repeal a treaty or any provision of it, so far at least as to control the action of the Executive in relation to it, yet I think that a statute which may have that effect should be held to mean no more than its language necessarily imports.

Under this rule, when the term taxes is used in such an act of Con

gress, without explanation from the context or other noticeable circumstances, it must be understood to mean taxes under the laws of the United States-that is, taxes known as national taxes, in distinction from State or Territorial taxes.

When the Government is both a debtor and creditor of the same party, Congress might think it no substantial, though a literal, violation of an international covenant to deduct what is due to this Government from what this Government owes to the other party. But that Congress meant that the Government of the United States should become a tax collector for a Territorial county, and should execute this office by breaking a treaty with a foreign power, is not to be inferred from language which will bear any other interpretation.

If it were intended that this money should be withheld for the benefit of Pierce County, Congress would probably have directed that it should be paid the treasury of that county. But no such direction appears in the statute. The provision is that the amount of such taxes shall be withheld from the appropriation-that is, shall be kept in the Treasury of the United States-a very fit place for taxes assessed by the United States, but not for taxes assessed by Pierce County.

I am not informed whether any United States taxes were in fact assessed upon the property of the company. But it is hardly possible that the company could have had interests of great magnitude within the United States for the last ten years without liability to national taxes; and Congress might have inserted the proviso out of abundant caution, without knowing whether a claim for such taxes existed in fact.

I do not overlook the fact that Territory is a creation of Congress, and sustains to the General Government a relation different in many respects from that sustained by a State. Nevertheless, its taxes are so different from the taxes of the United States, in the authority which immediately imposes them, in the agencies which collect them, and in the purposes to which they are applied, that Congress cannot reasonably be supposed to have intended to embrace them under the general name "taxes" in such a statute as that under consideration.

I have not examined the questions of the regularity and sufficiency of the certificate from the auditor of Pierce County; of the validity of the county's claim for taxes, or of the validity of the assessed penalty; or whether the taxes, if valid at all, constitute a general debt of the company, or binds alone the property once occupied by it, and now recognized as belonging to the United States; because the construction which I have felt obliged to put upon the proviso in question makes such examination unnecessary.

I am, therefore, of the opinion that neither the tax nor the penalty which Pierce County is said to claim from the company should be withheld, and that no taxes should be withheld under the proviso except such as may be found to have been legally assessed upon the property of the company by the Government of the United States.

Very respectfully, &c.,

No. 240.

A. T. AKERMAN.

ir.

Mr. Hartley to Mr. Fish.

TREASURY DEPARTMENT,

Washington, D. C., September 2, 1871. (Received September 4.) SI: I have to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of August 28, a copy of the opinion of the Attorney General on the question

of the amount of taxes due from the sum appropriated for the payment of an award to the Puget Sound Agricultural Company. You ask to be informed whether any tax for the use of the United States, as imposed by any act of Congress, has been legally assessed upon any of the property of that company covered by the award in question.

I herewith transmit in reply a copy of a letter from the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, to whom the subject was referred for report.

In view of the result of the Commissioner's investigation, I am enabled to state that this Department is not informed of any unpaid assessment of tax due the United States, against the property of the Puget Sound Agricultural Company. Respectfully, &c.,

J. F. HARTLEY, Acting Secretary of the Treasury.

Mr. Douglass to Mr. Boutwell.

TREASURY DEPARTMENT, Washington, D. C., August 31, 1871.

SIR: Yours of the 28th instant, inclosing letter of the honorable Secretary of State, with the opinion of the Attorney General upon the question "what taxes if any are to be withheld by this Government from the sum appropriated for the payment of an award to the Puget Sound Agricultural Company, by the act of February 21, 1871, required by the treaty with Great Britain of July 1, 1863," is acknowledged.

You request me to state whether any such taxes have been legally assessed and remain unpaid to the United States. I perceive by reference to the second page of the "opinion of the Attorney General," that your inquiry relates to taxes assessed before the "award" was made. It not appearing at what time the award was made, I have caused investigation to be made with reference to the entire period covered by the operations of the internal revenue system, and find that no taxes have been assessed during that period on the property of the Puget Sound Agricultural Company which remain unpaid at the present date.

Respectfully,

J. W. DOUGLASS,

Commissioner.

[MEMORANDUM.-For the correspondence of the consul of the United States at Hong-Kong, see CHINA.]

No. 160.]

No. 241.

GREECE.

Mr. Tuckerman to Mr. Fish.

LEGATION OF THE UNITED STATES,

Athens, January 14, 1871. (Received February 8.) SIR: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of the volume of Consular Regulations; also of your dispatch of the 10th ultimo, No. 55. The festivities of the Greek New Year took place yesterday. The diplomatic body assisted at mass at the cathedral and from thence proceeded to the palace, where the King and Queen gave an official audience, and the customary address to the throne was delivered, to which Her Majesty responded.