The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science Volume 30 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907 edition. Excerpt: ... Chapter V FRANCHISES IN RELATION TO TAXATION The difference between landed property on the one hand, and merchandise, the product of labor, on the other, is that one is only a qualified private interest in a subject-matter in which from its nature there resides a public interest concurrent with and prior to the private interest, while the other is a subject-matter over which the private right should justly be considered as entire and exclusive. So, too, the intangible representative interests which make up so large a portion of property holdings should be considered as representing in themselves entirely the interest of their owners, so that neither in movable goods nor investment securities is there any such public interest as the public servitude in land to justify or require the depleting of the separate private interests involved. But merely representative interests do not constitute the whole body of intangible property. Just as in regard to tangible property, that is, lands and goods, we find two classes, one, lands involving justly a public interest of taxation, and the other, goods, involving justly no such interest in respect to the mere ownership thereof, so in regard to intangible property we should expect to find a class of rights involved naturally with a just public interest of taxation as well as the merely representative rights involving no such public interest in respect to the mere ownership thereof. Such a class of intangible property involving a public interest appears in franchise rights artificially created by the law. As a title to a specific piece of land is individualized from all the rest of the surface of the earth by the artifice of positive law in an organized society, so these intangible artificial rights are carved...