11 Ga. 79 | Ga. | 1852
By the Court.
delivering the opinion.
So also the State is bound, although not named by an Act of the Legislature, for the maintainance of religion, the advancement of learning or the support of the poor. If not bound, such Acts might be defective in their operations. The whole public being interested, theymustbeso construed as tobe effectual — that is, they must be so construed as to protect the rights of the public under them. This rule of construction imperiously demands that the Acts under review be construed so as to embrace and bind the State. Without such construction, they might be ineffectual. If the State is not bound by them — if the exempted articles can be sold for the tax of the citizen, then in cases where the whole property, the family- Bible for example, will only be sufficient to pay it, the whole benefit of the law is lost to the family; and in all cases the benefit of these laws is lost, and they become ineffectual, to the extent that the exempted property is applied to pay the tax. Such construction impairs no power of the Government. It does not interfere with the power to impose and collect taxes. It does not assume that the Legislature has not the right to impose the tax, or to appropriate all the property of the citizen to pay it. It goes upon the idea, that the Legislature has waived, for reasons of humanity and of State policy, the right in these cases to sell the exempted property, to pay taxes. That the Legislature may waive this right expressly, or expressly forbear to exercise it, I presume will not be questioned. I have no question but that it can do so, as in these instances, to an extent that does not in any sensible degree, abstract from the necessary revenues of
Upon these points we shall remand this cause; and the other questions, growing out of the application for a new trial, need not be discussed.
Let the judgment be reversed,