58 Miss. 478 | Miss. | 1880
delivered the opinion of the court.
The- mayor and aldermen of the city of Vicksburg imposed a privilege-tax of $5 per week upon all commercial travellers and drummers, and sought to compel its payment from the relator by arrest and imprisonment. The relator sued out this writ of habeas corpus on the ground that the city authorities had no right, under their charter, to enact an ordinance imposing such a tax, and being sustained in this position by the judge below, was discharged from custody. The city appeals under that clause of our Habeas Corpus Act which gives to either party aggrieved the right to appeal. Code 1880, sect. 2312. The city rests its right to impose the tax upon a clause of its charter which empowers the Board of Mayor and Aldermen “ to levy and collect for corporation purposes a privilege-tax upon the business, trade, or employment of all auctioneers, grocers, merchants, brokers, bankers, cotton-factors and cotton-sellers, retailers, taverns, hotels, boarding-house keepers, coffee-house keepers, retail liquor-dealers, confectioners, peddlers, junk dealers, and others of like character, as the board may designate.” If drummers or commercial travellers are “of like character” with the followers of any of the callings enumerated, then the board had the power, by specific designation of them, to impose the tax. They are more nearly like merchants and peddlers than any of the others named, and yet they are quite unlike either. They follow no independent business; they make no contracts for themselves, nor do they come, ordinarily, under any sort of personal obligation. Tliey are mere solicitors of orders for others, and differ in no respect from clerks or salesmen except that the}'- are ambulatory in their operations and do not usually carry or deliver the goods sold.
By their engagements they bind their employers, and not themselves, and they have no other interest in the result of the bargains made than any ordinary clerk would. It seems quite clear that the power does not exist under the charter to levy a privilege-tax on a clerk who remains in the storehouse
Affirmed.