State ex rel. Dickinson v. Neely

Citations

• 30 S.C. 587
• 3 L.R.A. 672
• 9 S.E. 664
• 1889 S.C. LEXIS 136

Syllabus

<p>1. All the townships in the State having received repeated legislative recognition as such, and this township in particular, it is too late now to question whether this township was territorially designated with the formalities required in the act of 1868, originally creating townships.</p> <p>2. The act of 1888 (20 Stat., 12) was not intended to validate a previous statute which this court had pronounced unconstitutional, nor to legalize acts done thereunder, but to impose upon consenting townships a debt which they had vainly attempted to impose upon themselves under such unconstitutional statute.</p> <p>3. The legislature cannot delegate to a township the power to tax for a public purpose within its limits, unless the tax be also for a corporate purpose; but the legislature, by the exercise of its own power, may impose a tax for a public purpose affecting a township, although such purpose is not corporate. And a railroad is so far a public purpose as to a township through which it passes, that the legislature may impose a tax upon the property of the township, provided the legislature is satisfied that the inhabitants have consented to be taxed for such purpose.</p> <p>4. Mandamus will not lie to compel a county treasurer to pay out money on a coupon of a railroad aid bond, when the only constitutional law that recognizes such bond and its coupons as a debt declares that no tax shall be levied to pay interest on such debt until the railroad has been completed, and that all taxes heretofore collected for such purpose shall be refunded to the taxpayers; and where no tax has been, or could have been, collected since the railroad was completed.</p>