7 Mo. App. 169 | Mo. Ct. App. | 1879
delivered the opinion of the court.
The defendant was fined in the First District Police Court of the city of St. Louis for the violation of a city ordinance in keeping a hotel without a license. On appeal to the Court of Criminal Correction, the judgment was affirmed ; and the defendant thereupon appealed to this court.
An assessment upon the value of certain property for a revenue-tax has no necessary connection with a license to carry on a particular business, in which the same property may be used. There is no double taxation, in an offensive sense, nor any injustice or oppression, as a mere matter of principle, in the exercise of municipal authority to raise revenue by both methods.
' There is nothing unreasonable or oppressive in graduating the amount to be paid for a hotel-license by the number of rooms which may be devoted to the accommodation of the public. Nor is there any intelligible reason why the number of rooms actually occupied should be proved in order to justify the license-tax. The assessment is not upon the rooms, but upon the business of keeping a hotel.
Upon the whole, there is in this record no question meriting a detailed discussion, which is not conclusively settled in the Green and Sternberg cases already referred