This case is about slaves or slavery.
| Year: | 1843 |
| Citation: | 1 Gill 302 |
| Jurisdiction: | Maryland |
| People: | |
| Short Summary: | The legislature, by the act of 1831, selecting a board of managers to "remove free negroes and mulattoes from Maryland to Liberia." The issue that arose concerned the state's ability to recover a tax from the collector for a tax that it had no Constitutional authority to impose. Holding that a tax may only be imposed for the support of the government as opposed to a political view, this instance being the latter and that no bond can be collected in this suit for the tax in contraversy. Note this language: "It thus appears they are treated as a vicious or dangerous population, and to lessen the number, provision is made by the law for the removal of all by their consent, and for the transportation of such as might be thereafter liberated, who refused to go, or did not furnish the evidence required of their character. In the same spirit, laws have been passed to prevent their migration to this State; to make it unlawful for them to bear arms; to guard even their religious assemblages with peculiar watchfulness. Other laws might be adverted to, for the purpose of shewing the light in which this population has been regarded by the legislature, but we deem it unnecessary; presuming that enough has been said to lead us to the conclusion, that a law passed for the removal of a population viewed in such a light, has been enacted with a political view." |
| Law type: | |
| Full name: | Richard R. Waters and others vs. The State of Maryland |
| Court: | Court of Appeals of Maryland |