It is not difficult to distinguish what are proper objects of public support and for which taxes can be levied and collected from those that are not, if we keep in sight the fundamental or organic law. In the formation of a republic no new rights are created. The adoption of a constitution is but declaratory of pre-existing rights and laws; its object is to define and limit the powers of the government, and to guard and protect the rights of the citizens. An eminent jurist, in speaking of the constitution, uses the following clear and forcible language: "It is not the beginning of a community, nor the origin of private rights; it is not the fountain of law, nor the incipient state of government; it is not the cause, but the consequence, of personal and political freedom; it grants no rights to the people, but is the creation of their power, the instrument of their convenience, designed for their protection in the enjoyment of the rights and powers which they possessed before the constitution was made; it is but the frame-work of the political government, and necessarily based upon the pre-existing condition of laws, rights, habits, and modes of thought. There is nothing primitive in it; it is all derived from a known source. It pre-supposes an organized society, law, order, property, personal freedom, a love of political liberty, and enough of cultivated intelligence to know how to guard it against the encroachments of tyranny. A written constitution is, in every instance, a _limitation_ upon the powers of the government in the hands of agents, for there never was a written republican constitution which delegated to functionaries all the _latent powers_ which lie _dormant_ in every nation, and are boundless in extent, and incapable of definitions." Keeping in mind the distinction existing between measures of a governmental or public nature, and those that are private, and applying the above quoted definition of constitutional power, we cannot find it difficult to determine what are, and what are not, constitutional levies and collection of taxes.