Boston, Concord & Montreal Railroad v. State

The unconstitutionality of unequal taxation is too plainly declared by our constitution, and too well settled by repeated decisions made during the last fifty-three years, to be debatable. A disproportional, unequal assessment, so far as it is disproportional and unequal, is an act, not of taxation, but of confiscation, destitute of that element of equal rights which, under our constitution, is an essential part of the definition of law. “ Equality is the corner-stone of every just and wholesome system of taxation. Every departure from this principle, no matter what the pretext may be, shifts…