12 Wend. 390 | N.Y. Sup. Ct. | 1834
By the Court.
The question in this case is ■whether a corporation can be compelled to work on the highways 1 The statement of the question in this form seems to admit of but one answer, and that in the negative. A corporation has been said to have no soul; and surely it has no corporeal body. It has no material existence; it is incapable of performing labor, and therefore cannot be compelled to perform an impossibility. The argument in opposition to this view of the case is, that the law imposes merely a tax, and that corporations are liable to pay taxes; that as work on the highways may be commuted for, though the corporation cannot perform manual labor in person, it can pay the commutation money by its agents. The question then is, whether the statutes require a tax or a personal service ?
“ All moneyed or stock corporations deriving an income or profit from their capital, or otherwise, shall be liable to taxation on their capital, in the manner hereinafter prescribed.” 1 R. S. 414, § 1. By the decisions of this court, banks have been held liable to pay village taxes, as well as town, county and state taxes; but the question now presented has never been decided. A tax may be defined to be a sum of money to be paid by the owners of property severally, yearly or otherwise, to compose a public fund for the purpose of defraying public expenses. The statute in relation to highways does not treat the labor assessed to be laid out on the highways as a tax; there is no assessment of any sum of money; no collector is appointed; and there is no mode provided for enforcing the collection by a levy upon property. When the object is to raise money, the mode of assessment and collection is always prescribed. Again; by the article which treats of the persons Hable to work on highways, and the making of assessments therefor, it is enacted that “ every person owning or occupying land in the town in which he or she resides, and every male inhabitant above the age of twenty-one years, residing in the town where the assessment is made, shall be as
The judgment of the justice must therefore be reversed.