Daily v. Swope

Citations

• 47 Miss. 367

Syllabus

<p>1. Local assessments fob local impboyements. — Ifc is well settled that it is competent for a state legislature to authorize the construction, or to construct, or aid in construction, of local public improvements, by means of local taxation.</p> <p>2. Mississippi biveb levees. — The protection of lands subject to overflow is a proper object for the exercise of this power of local improvement and taxation.</p> <p>3. General principle. — Those who are chiefly partakers of the benefits of such local public works should bear a proportionally larger share of the costs.</p> <p>4. Taxing power. — Municipal corporations, counties, or other artificial districts or subdivisions, have no inherent power of taxation. Their right to tax is by delegation from the state.</p> <p>6. <e Equal and uniform taxation.” — The “ taxation ” which is required by § 29 of article XII of the constitution of Mississippi, to be ei equal and uniform,” and upon the ad valorem principle, is such taxation as the legislature may impose for the use of the state at large, and does not include assessments on property in a defined locality for improvements supposed to be chiefly beneficial to a specified class of property, and which for this reason is charged with the expense; nor do any general tax laws or exemptions apply to such local assessments.</p> <p>6. Constitutional and statutory construction. — The constitution is a law, differing from a statute only in its paramount force in cases of conflict: and it is a safe rule to give to terms used in the constitution such meaning and application as they have received from legislative and judicial interpretation; except in cases where it is apparent that a more general or restricted sense was intended.</p> <p>7. Same — judicial construction in other states. — When provisions have been adopted into the constitution of this state, from those of other states, it must be presumed that the framers of our constitution were conversant with, and designed to adop