of a garnishee named. (Ad. Rule 2.) The writ, of course, must be based on affidavit. The writ in either kind of suit is returnable, usually in fourteen days, when the cause is ready for hearing. Postponements and continuances may be had as at Common Law. Full pleading is encouraged, and no objections are maintainable to facts being fully recited.

Upon seizure of a ship the owner must file his claim before she can be released on bond, or stipulation, and his answer must be verified on oath. The defendant may also be required to answer interrogatories which may be propounded at the close of the libel. (Ad. Rule 27.)

A noticeable feature of the suit in rem is that every person having a maritime lien on the thing seized, of whatever nature, can and should come into the suit by libel of intervention, and the court on the trial adjudicates and classifies each intervention and renders but one decree, covering every intervention filed. (Ad. Rule 34.) Should the defendant fail to answer on the return day of the process, he may be adjudged in contumacy, and decree pro confesso be· entered against him, and the cause proceed ex parte. (Ad. Rule 29.)

The registry is an important adjunct to the court. Money there deposited must be kept in a bank designated by the court and can not be drawn out except on the check of the judge, countersigned by the clerk. (Ad. Rule 42.) Our State courts and our Legislature might benefit by copying this salutary rule.

The nomenclature of incidents of admiralty practice differs in many particulars from that of the Common Law, and matters or things analogous to, or substantially the same, have names which to the Common Law practitioner seem "quaint and curious." The word "libel," for example, conveys its specific meaning widely different from that of the Common or Criminal Law. "Monition," "stipulation," "proctor," "apostles," "apparel," "condemnation" and many other words have their specific meaning in admiralty procedure, at least mildly surprising to the English scholar, interpreting them from merely an etymological, and not a maritime standpoint.

CONCLUSION.

This paper is subject to the just criticism that it is incomplete and disjointed, but the scope of the subject precludes a review of even most of the marked points of difference between the admiralty and the common and statute law. Proper and intelligent treatment of the subject would require a volume of treatise.

It may be appropriate to say that the practice of maritime law is fraught with human interest. There are presented to the admiralty practitioner manifold phases of human nature. He is constantly thrown with people from strange countries, for among those who at some time appear in admiralty causes are representatives of many foreign lands. The very subject matters with which he has to deal contrast sharply with such incidents as the dry details of a land title, or the establishment of corners in a boundary suit. There are developed before him in his office or during the trials of many classes of cases, facts which make him think better of his race. The sailor's simple descriptions of shipwreck and salvage; of battles with storm and tempest; of rescues of life which stamp the actors as heroes; of sufferings, privations and ofttimes death, command absorbing interest and sympathy, and teach that the tales of such writers as Cooper, Marryat and Clark Russell all have their parallels in reality.

The practitioner of admiralty law becomes truly wedded to it, and when out of the jurisdiction of an admiralty court, feels like the sailor ashore when out of sight of blue water.

THE TAXATION OF INTANGIBLES.

A PAPER READ BEFORE THE

TEXAS BAR ASSOCIATION,

BY

W. D. WILLIAMS,

OF THE FORT WORTH BAR.

Some of you may know that at the last session of the Legislature I had the honor to present to that body a bill providing for the taxation, by a method new to this State, of certain assets and properties in Texas. For the moment, it does not matter why I thought our present laws insufficient to compel equitable contributions on values from the owners of those properties. The point I have in mind is that I did propose a change in the law, and that this fact came to the knowledge of a kind-hearted, wellinformed gentleman, an officer of this Association, who, being ignorant of the consequences involved in his act, was moved by his courtesy and largeness of soul to invite me to read at this meeting a paper touching upon the legal phases of the system which I had contemplated as being an improvement upon the one now in use. I say the invitation was moved by the generous courtesy of the gentleman, but I can not so readily tell what moved my rash and unconsidered acceptance. When I cast back in my mind, I can remember I had an idea such a paper might be confined to questions of law arising upon the plan which I offered before the Legisture, that I might expound the constitutionality of my notions and the validity in law of the features I desired to engraft on our revenue system. But alas! for the dreams of mortal man. The more I have studied, the better have I learned what I seem dimly to have known all the time, that there are no legal doubts involved in the entire subject; that no abstruse reasoning or entrancing,

flawless logic is needed to show the constitutionality of the proposals; that for years and years no one has dreamed of denying the validity of such enactments; that, in short, the last one to arrive at judicial settlement, of the principles I found such pleasure in advocating, was definitely and positively settled in the Supreme Court of the United States more than ten years ago.

The subject matter of my paper vanished in the realms of stare decisis, and my author heart was bereft of its topic. I am driven, gentlemen, from the law to the facts, but let me assure you the compulsion has not come from that direction toward which we are accustomed to look for its approach, when, in ordinary cases, it is the moving cause of such a change of base.

That bill, which through a looseness of designation for which I was largely responsible, came to be known as the "Intangible Tax Bill," named some twenty-five different kinds of property and business, and provided that each of them should be taxed, first, upon its ordinary tangible property, if it had any in Texas, and second, upon all other of its assets. And it was the second proposition, innocent as I had thought it, which caused all the disturbance. The ordinary tangible property was to be taxed under the existing system, which, notwithstanding an habitual undervaluation, is reasonably effective when applied to those old-fashioned subjects of revenue which were almost the only taxable assets when the system was first applied.

By its terms the bill applied to all trust, guaranty and surety companies, to all gas, water, electric light, electric power, telegraph, telephone and street railroad companies, to ferry, bridge, wharf and elevator companies, to express and insurance companies, and to companies operating different kinds of cars, but owning no railroad tracks on which to run them, and to all individuals and associations engaged in the same character of business. It omitted railroad companies, which, in my judgment, should have been included, and it is possible there were other minor omissions of kinds of business which came within the reasons compelling the change. Since, as an ordinary rule, the properties affected by the bill are operated by corporations and not by individuals and associations, and for the sake of brevity, I will, in treating the subject in this paper, omit all reference to non-corporate owners, merely saying at this place that the same provisions applied to all alike. Each company affected was required to make out and deliver to the State Comptroller an annual verified statement, showing the corporate name, the character of business, the authority by which it had been incorporated, its total capital stock with its par and its market

value, its total outstanding bonds, with the market value thereof, its tangible property in Texas and its value, its tangible property outside of the State and its value, and its gross and net earnings for the preceding year. If the company was one doing business both within our territories and beyond our borders, it was further rquired to show its total mileage or business, and its mileage or business under our jurisdiction. And every company having a business extending beyond a single taxing district was required to show its location and to make a comparative statement of its business at the different points. For the object of the bill was to secure not only State, but local revenue as well, wherever the same was justly payable.

From these statements and from such other information as it could and did obtain, a State Tax Board, created by the bill, consisting of the Governor, the Attorney General, the Comptroller and the Secretary of State, was directed to ascertain the value of the assets taxable for the benefit of our government, and the respective values taxable for the benefit of the several local taxing districts. The value of an entire property was to be measured, in so far as the board thought it just, by the aggregate of the market value of the stock, added to the market value of the bonds, if any were outstanding. From this a deduction was made of the value of the tangible property and of all permanent investments, not necessary to the business, whether tangible or not, and the result was treated as the distributable value of the business. A portion of this distributable value, the amount of which was to be based upon the business done, or upon the mileage here and elsewhere, was assigned to Texas in the case of interstate corporations. There was no proportion to be calculated in the case of a domestic corporation-all of whose property would be taxable in Texas. The apportionment between the different taxing districts was to be made by the same sort of a proportion. At each step the board had full power to depart from the general rule of apportionment, if the justice of the case seemed to require it. District apportionments, with names and a description of each property, were to be sent to the proper assessors, and, since assessments at full value are not made in Texas, the bill provided that these companies should be treated by the assessors as are other owners of taxables, and that their assets should be listed, valued and taxed as in other cases.

So condensed a statement necessarily endangers the acceptance of the details of the bill in the minds of my hearers, who, in the absence of particulars, may very reasonably inquire of themselves whether there is not some direction in which the just rights of the