Portage sentinel. [volume] (Ravenna, Ohio) 1845-1854, 1853-08-17

No other investment in the State returns one.
third as large profits.
To guard against such rank injustice for the
future and to provide for system just and equal
taxation, which, while it did no injustice to the
Banks, would make him pay his fair proportion
of taxes to aid the school, the road the oor the
county and the State fund, the new Constitution.
in Sec. B. OF Article XII, provides as follows:
Sec. 3. The General Assembly shall provide
by law, for taxing the notes and bills discounted
or purchased, moneys loaned, and all other prop
erty, effects or dues, of every description, (with-
out deduction) of all banks, now existing, or
hereafter created, and of all bankers, so that all
property employed IN banking, shall ala0ays bear
burden Of taxation, equal to that imposed on the
property of individuals.
| Under this clause of the Constitution, which
nowgoverns Ohio, law was passed to tax the
"notes and bills discounted or purchased, moneys
loaned, and the other property, effects and dues
of the Ohio Banks, without deduction, so that til
property employed in banking should bear bur-
den of taxation, equal, but not greater than that
imposed on the property of individuals.
As was to have been expected, the men who
opposed the adoption of the Constitution, because
it made it duty incumbent on the Legislature to
pass a law making the privileged banker aid in
supporting the State government by his taxes, as
it makes the unprivileged Farmer and Mechanic,
were loud in their execrations of the law, and OF
the Democratic Legislature that passed it. They
now assume the "HIGHER LAW DocTRINE," and
each to the extent of his ability, and his influence
give ''ad and comfort to the Banks in resisting
and trampling this sound and just law under foot,
and in disregarding it. Finding that the judiciary
of the State under the solemnity of their official
oaths, were determined to carry out the law, they
now seek its repeal by the Legislature, and for
this purpose endeavoring to distract the De-
mocracy by bringing the Maine Liquor Law ques-
ton in the political field, being ready to take any
the Banker from just taxation, justifying the
means, however disreputable. Temperance is a
moral, not political question, and should have
no more to do with politics than has religion, yet
we find these men forcing it into the arena, and
doing it immense in jury, in the hope of gaining
a whig member or two, to aid in repeating that
portion of the Tax Law which places Bankers on
the same footing with honest men, in supporting
the State government, in schooling its children,
and in paying off the State debt.
That the Banks should be made to paw their
taxes, no man with an unprejudiced mind, reading
the facts we have given from Mr.. Payne's report,
can doubt. They are protected by the laws of
Ohio-they owe their existence to them. BY
their aid they allowed to issue three dollars in
paper for one dollar in silver and these paper
promises they loan as money, thus drawing in
terest on their own indebtedness; and, yet, with
their vast means, they and their attorneys and fa
vorites are in the field, to resist law which taxes
them as the Merchant, the Mechanic and the Far
mer is taxed, and to elect Legislature to repeal
that law, enacted it was, under the express
commands of the Constitution of the State
Ohio State Democrat.