We are aware that it is claimed that railroad corporations are public corporations--and this granted, taxes may be rightfully levied and collected for their benefit. But we do _not_ grant this, and shall, in the following pages, essay to demonstrate that all railroad corporations are private, being owned and controlled by private citizens, and not by the state or national government. But admitting they are public and not private corporations, the general government even then cannot legally charter or control them, because the power for that purpose has never been delegated by the states or the people; and it follows that the general government cannot rightfully impose taxes upon the people for the support of corporations over which it can have no control. If congress can levy taxes for the construction and support of railroads, and take the management and control of them, it certainly can take the entire supervision of all the highways in all the states, provide for their construction, and tax the people at will for that purpose. This being admitted, no local or police regulation in any of the states is exclusively under the jurisdiction of the state governments; but the general government may at any time take the absolute control of the governmental affairs of the several states, and thus complete the centralization of power now so rapidly developing in all the departments at Washington. The assumption of the right to tax the people for any and every purpose that to congress shall seem expedient, irrespective of constitutional prohibition, is at once destructive of the rights that were supposed to be guaranteed and preserved to the whole people by the constitution. If the will of those men who happen to occupy seats in congress (and that will too often controlled by personal interest) is to govern, then all constitutional government is at an end, and the liberty and property of the citizen have no constitutional safeguard. Taxes to the entire value of all the wealth in the country may be levied by the general government, and the citizen of this republic holds his entire estate at the will of the persons who fill the offices of the country. Under the system of congressional legislation that now obtains, the laboring and producing classes are being rapidly reduced to a state of servitude that would grace the most despotic government. CHAPTER XII. THE RIGHT OF EMINENT DOMAIN.--UNCONSTITUTIONALITY OF MUNICIPAL AID TO RAILROADS.