Board of Directors v. Houston

Citations

• 71 Ill. 318

Syllabus

<p>1. Taxation by private corporations—and herein, what is a private corporation. It was not in the power of the legislature, under the constitution of 1848, to confer upon private persons or private corporations the authority to levy and collect taxes or special assessments on real estate.</p> <p>2. Where the object of the creation of a corporation is not declared in the law creating it, but it appears that it was to advance the private interests of land-owners in the district incorporated, and none others are embraced in its provisions, although it may incidentally enhance the general prosperity of the whole community, it is none the less a private corpora tion.</p> <p>3. By an act of the legislature, certain persons were appointed a board of directors to locate and superintend the construction of a levee on the Wabash river, within certain townships, and were made capable to contract, sue and be sued, by a given name and style. The act further provided that all the owners of real estate within the townships named, at certain stated periods, should elect three resident freeholders of the ter ritory, to succeed the board appointed by the act, and that the board should appoint two freeholders to assess the benefit such improvement would be to each tract or farm, and makes such assessment a lien upon the real estate until paid, and provides for proceedings by summons, in the nature of a scire facias, against each delinquent, and a judgment for the sale of the land to pay the assessment and costs: Held, that the board created by this act is a private corporation, and that the assessments made under the power therein contained are void, as being in conflict with section 5 of the 9th article of the constitution of 1848.</p> <p>4. Such a law can not be maintained on the principle that, where the public exigency requires it, the General Assembly may establish districts by the union of two or more municipal corporations, and place the government entirely under the control