Morrison Waite

“ They represent, in the classification of taxable property, the ordinary debts due to a person; and it has been common for so long a time in the States to measure their taxable value by their excess over like debts owing to the same person in the same right, that I cannot believe it was the intention of Congress in its limitation on the power of taxing national bank shares to require a deduction of debts from the value of shares, when such a deduction was only allowed to other persons from this one kind of moneyed capital. ”