Edward Douglass White

“ If there was a rule of public policy giving rise to the assumption that stamp taxes relating to express companies could not be shifted, it becomes impossible in reason to understand why, when the taxation was changed by the act of 1863 from a stamp tax to one on gross receipts, the express companies should have been brought within the proviso to § 80 of the act of 1862. ”

“ Must it be held that the purpose of such a law is to regulate the price at which the goods shall be sold, and restrain the merchant therefore from distributing the sum of the tax in the price charged for his merchandise? As the means by which the burdens of taxes may be shifted are as multiform and as various as is the power to contract itself, it follows that the argument relied on if adopted would control almost every conceivable form of contract, and render them void if they had the result stated. ”

“ It carries the tax over and beyond the carrier to the thing carried. Improvement companies, not themselves authorized to act as carriers, but having only power to construct and maintain roadways, charging tolls for the use thereof, are generally limited by their charters in the rates of toll they are allowed to charge. Hence the right to increase the tolls to the extent of the tax was given them in order that the tax might come from the freight transported, and not from the treasury of the companies. ”

“ On the contrary, if the right to seek to shift the burden obtains, then the substantial result of what is done becomes the criterion, and the mere fact that the motive, announced, for a reasonable increase of rates, is declared to be a shifting of the burden, cannot prevent the exercise of the lawful right. ”

“ It shall be the duty of every railroad or steamboat company, carrier, express company, or corporation, or person whose occupation is to act as such, to issue to the shipper or consignor or his agent, or person from whom any goods are accepted for transportation, a bill of lading, manifest, or other evidence of receipt and forwarding for each shipment received for carriage and transportation, whether in bulk or in boxes, bales, packages, bundles, or not so inclosed or included ”

“ And no necessity for passing on the first proposition arises from the mere fact that the decision of the second proposition requires a consideration of the provisions of the statute which it would be necessary to take into view if the first proposition was under consideration. ”

“ Indeed, it seems almost impossible to suppose that a purpose of such a character could have been contemplated, as the widest conjecture would not be adequate to foreshadow the far-reaching consequences which would ensue from it. To declare upon what person or property all taxes must primarily fall is a usual purpose of a law levying taxes. ”