Case ID: johns_6/html/0092-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "\n      Per Curiam.\n    ", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

The Overseers of the Poor of the town of Amenia against the Overseers of Stanford.
    NEW-YORK,
    May, 1810.
    
      Assessment and performance^of hie-h-meiis, is ítaxfwMiInthe second"^ section ofthe act for the reliefolMhe poor, (24 sess. c. so as a scss. c. 90.) The -word tapfs, means a contribution in money, not labour or personal service.
    IN error, on .certiorari, from the general sessions of pn£ peace Qf J)iichess county. The justices of the peace Qf the town of Armenia, made an order for the removal of a female pauper and her infant children to the town of Stanford, as the place of their last legal settlement. The overseers of the poor of Stanford appealed from the order to th¿ next general sessions of the peace of Duchess county, held at Poughkeepsie, in October, 1809.
    At the trial, before the sessions, the overseers of Stanford proved that one John June had been assessed, and worked on the highway, in the town of Amenia, for several years, during which time, Abraham June, since deceased, who was the son of John, and the husband of the pauper and father of the children, was an infant, and resided in his father’s family. On this evidence the court of general sessions quashed the order of removal, on the ground, that under the act for the relief and settlement of the poor, passed the 8th April, 1801, (24 sess. c. 184.) a person gained a legal settlement in any city of town, who had been assessed, and had worked on the highways, for two years preceding the act to amend the former act, passed the 24th March, 1809. (32 sess. c. 90.)
    This case was submitted to the court, without argument.
   Per Curiam.

By the act of 1801, (Laws, vol. 1. 566.) every person who should come to inhabit in any city or town, and should have been charged with and paid his share towards the public taxes of such city or town for the space of two years, shall be adjudged to have obtained a legal settlement in such city or town. Taxes, in the popular and ordinary sense of the term, (and in that sense laws are generally to be read,) mean pecuniary contribution ; and when the word paid is added by way of defining it, the sense becomes more clear and certain. The pauper’s father, while he lived in Amenia, worked on the highways. He performed labour or personal service, and this was no more the payment of a tax, than training in the militia would have been; and it ought not any more to be considered as the payment of a tax within the purview of the poor law. If the legislature had intended to include bodily labour on the highway, as a contribution which would have entitled the party to a settlement, they would undoubtedly have used words of á more general and less appropriate meaning. It was with a view, probably, to prevent mistakes on this point, that the act of 1809 (32 sess. c. 90'.) declared, that the assessment and performance of labour, on the highway, should not be considered such a tax.

The order of the sessions, quashing the order of removal, ought therefore to be reverséd.

Judgment of reversal.