THE TAXING POWER.
One of the highest attributes of sovereignty is the power of taxation. The Constitution vests this great and sacred power solely in the Legislature, with no authority to delegate it to any other hands, except within certain well defined limits.
County organizations and municipal corporations may possess this great power by delegation from the Legislature, but beyond these it should not go. Only in cases of clear public convenience and necessity has the transgression of these limits ever been countenanced, and then only under the strongest safeguards and most stringent regulations. If this great power is to be delegated ad libitum to private corporations what protection are the people to have in their rights of property? Take, for instance, the real estate in Indianapolis. It is taxed, first, by the State; next, by the city; next, by each one of the ten or twelve railroad corporations; next, by five or six manufacturing associations; and so on without limit, until it is literally taxed out of existence.
Now, by these acts this great power of taxation, under the guise of assessments, has been delegated, in its widest and most unrestricted form to mere private corporations. If it is to be extended to one class, there can be no justice in withholding it from others. I tell you, Mr. Speaker, in the enactment of these laws you have gone beyond the constitutional limit, and I demand, in the name of the suffering people of Northern Indiana, that this body instantly take the backward step into the province of just and legitimate legislation.
