THE SUGAR BOUNTIES. 323 In an early Pennsylvania case 1 it is said that The common mind everywhere has taken in the understanding that taxes are a public imposition, levied by authority of the government, for the purpose of carrying on the government in all its machinery and operations ; that they are imposed for a public purpose. We have established, we think beyond cavil that there can be no lawful tax which is not laid for a public purpose. (Loan Association v. Topeka, 20 Wall., at p. 664.) Taxation, by the very meaning of the term, implies the raising of money for public uses, and excludes the raising if for private objects and purposes. (Allen v. Inhabitants of Jay, 60 Maine, 124, 127.) A tax is an impost levied by authority of government upon its citi- zens or subjects for the support of the State. (Camden v. Allen, 2 Dutch. 398.) No authority nor, as I believe, even dictum can be found which asserts that there can be any legitimate taxation where the money to be raised does not go into the public treasury, or is not destined for the use of the government or some of the public governmental divisions of the State. (Hanson v. Vernon, 27 Iowa, 28, 47.) Taxation is a mode of raising revenue for public purposes. When it is prostituted to objects in no way connected with the public interests or welfare, it ceases to be taxation and becomes plunder. Trans- ferring money from the owners of it into the possession of those who have no title to it, though it be done under the name and form of a tax, is unconstitutional for all the reasons which forbid the legislature to usurp any other power not granted to them. (Sharpless v. Mayor, 21 Pa. St. 147, 169.; 2 It may be remarked, parenthetically, that the importance of some such limitation upon the government's right to tax as that the purpose of taxation should be public cannot be overestimated. The whole fabric of society, as at present constituted, rests upon the private ownership of property. In other words, it is funda- mental that what a man earns or lawfully acquires is his property, and that among the objects of the law is that of protecting him in this ownership. In society organized upon socialistic or nationalistic principles, all property is at the disposal of the government. There is no private property. So long, however, as our present society continues to exist, at its basis lies the insti- tution of private ownership. Government has, for certain pur- poses and by certain methods, including that of taxation, the right to take from the citizen, against his will, a portion of his property. If this right were unlimited, the citizen would hold property not 1 Northern Liberties v. St. John's Church. 13 Pa. St. 104, per Coulter, J. 2 Norris v. Waco, 57 Tex. 635, 640; In matter of Market Street, 49 Cal. 546; Hooper v. Emery, 14 Me. 375, accord.
