59 Ill. 142; People v. Worthington, 21 Ill. 171; Trustees v. McConnell, 12 Ill. 138.

In Ohio it has been held that the debts of a taxpayer cannot validly be deducted from the value of his property in assessing the latter for taxation. Bank of Columbus v. Hines, 3 Ohio (N. S.), 1. See contra, Wetmore . Multnomah Co., 6 Oregon, 463. A mere difference in the method of collecting delinquent taxes in the various counties of the same State does not constitute a departure from the constitutional rule. People v. Central Pacific R. Co., 43 Cal. 398. See also Chambers v. Satterlee, 40 Cal. 497.

A State constitution declaring that the rule of taxation shall be uniform, requires a uniform assessment of value; and no tax upon property can be supported which does not proceed upon valid assessment legally made upon a uniform rule. Violations or evasions of duty imposed by law to secure a just and equal rule of assessment, whether occurring by mistake in law or by fraud in fact, which go to impair the general equality and uniformity of the taxation, vitiate the whole assessment as the foundation of a valid tax. Marsh v. Supervisors of Clark, 42 Wisc. 502; Philleo v. Hills, id. 527.

The mere fact that certain property has been by mistake omitted from an assessment does not render the whole assessment void. State v. Maxwell, 27 La. Ann. 722.

Discrimination, either in favor of or against corporations, is equally objectionable. Mayor, etc., of Mobile v. Stonewall Ins. Co., 53 Ala. 570.

Where the collection of specific taxes from a corporation has for a long time been the custom in lieu of the collection of a special tax on the property, it will not be held unconstitutional. Kneeland v. Milwaukee, 15 Wisc. 454.

Where taxes were uniform at the time they were assessed, and subsequently through fluctuations on the value of the property became not uniform, a law may nevertheless be passed to enforce their collection. North Carolina R. Co. v. Alamance Co., Commrs., 82 N. C. 259.

Generally under the constitutional provisions in question, the presumption is against double taxation. Commrs. of Rice v. Citizens' National Bank, 23 Minn. 280.

Where the property belonging to individuals in a county has been assessed at less than its actual value the constitutional rule of uniformity forbids that the property of a railroad company in such county should be assessed upon any greater per cent of its value than that of individuals. Bureau Co. . Chicago, B. & Q. R. Co., 44 Ill. 229; Chicago & N. W. R. Co. v. Boone Co., 44 Ill. 240. See, as to the proper method of assessing taxes upon the franchises of railroad corporations, Ramsey v. Hoeger, 6 Chicago L. N. 318. See Cumming v. Merchants' Bank, 101 U. S. 153.

The clauses of the various State constitutions prohibiting the taking of property without due process of law have frequently been held to be applicable to the subject of taxation. An assessment which fixes the value without giving the taxpayer any opportunity for a hearing is therefore void. Philadelphia v. Miller, 49 Pa. St. 440; Darling v. Gunn, 50 Ill. 424; State v. Drake, 33 N. J. L. 194; Butler v. Supervisors of Saginaw, 26 Mich. 22; Commonwealth v. Runk, 26 Pa. St. 235; Lorimer v. McCall, 4 W. & S. 133; Stewart v. Trevor, 56 Pa. St. 734.

The usual course is to assess the taxes in the first instance without notice, and then subsequently to give the taxpayer an opportunity to appeal from the assessment. Whatever provisions are made by statute with reference to the affording to the taxpayer the opportunity of appeal must be strictly complied with. Thames Mfg. Co. v. Lathrop, 7 Conn. 550; Marsh v. Chestnut, 14 Ill. 223; Cleghorn v. Postlethwaite, 43 Ill. 428; Nashville v. Weiser, 54 Ill. 245; Lowell v. Wentworth, 6 Cush. 221; Kansas Pac. R. Co. v. Russell, 8 Kans. 558; Philips v. Stevens Point, 29 Wisc. 594; Walker v. Chapman,

22 Ala. 116; Insurance Co. v. Yard, 17 Pa. St. 331; French v. Edwards, 13 Wall. 506; Overing v. Foote, 65 N. Y. 263.

The taxpayer is bound to take notice of the provisions of any general law with regard to the notice to him of his opportunity to appeal. Methodist Pr. Church v. Baltimore, 6 Gill. 391; O'Neal v. Bridge Co., 18 Md. 1.

Where an assessment has once been made it cannot be increased without special notice to the taxpayer, and unless he has the opportunity of a hearing allowed him. Philips v. Stevens Point, 25 Wise. 494; Griswold v. School District, 24 Mich. 262; Sioux City, etc., R. Co. v. Washington Co., 3 Neb. 30; Leavenworth Co. v. Lang, 8 Kans. 284; Kansas Pac. R. Co. v. Russell, 8 Kans. 558; Matherson v. Mazomanie, 20 Wisc. 191; McConkey v. Smith, 7 Chicago L. N. 210; State v. Drake, 33 N. J. 194; Glassford v. Darcy, 2 Ill. App. 521.

ALBERT SCHEFFER, GEORGE R. FINCH, AND CHARLES N. NELSON, EXECUTORS OF CHARLES SCHEFFER, DECEASED,

V.

THE WASHINGTON CITY, VIRGINIA MIDLAND, AND GREAT SOUTHERN R. R. Co.

(Advance Case, U. 8. Supreme Court. April 10, 1882.)

A party is injured in a railroad accident, his injury brings on insanity, and about eight months after this accident he commits suicide in a fit of insanity. Under a State statute, giving to the personal representative of the deceased a right of action for death caused by negligence or default, the accident is too remote a cause of the death to be actionable.

ERROR to the Circuit Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Virginia.

John B. Sanborn, Charles King, and George A. King, for plaintiffs in error.

Linden Kent, for defendant in error.

MILLER, J.-The plaintiffs in error, who are executors of Charles Scheffer, deceased, bring this action to recover of the railroad company damages for the death of said Charles, which is alleged to have resulted from the negligence of the company while carrying the deceased on their road. The defendant demurred to the declaration, and the demurrer was sustained, and to reverse the judgment rendered on demurrer this writ of error is sued out.

The statute of Virginia, under which the action was brought, is, as to the question raised on the demurrer, identical with those of all the other States, giving the right of recovery when the death is caused by such default or neglect as would have entitled the party injured to recover damages if death had not ensued.

The declaration, after alleging the carelessness of the officers of the railroad company, by which a collision occurred between the train on which Scheffer was and another train, on the 7th day of December, 1874, proceeds as follows:

"Whereby said sleeping-car was rent, broken, torn, and shattered, and by means whereof the said Charles Scheffer was cut, bruised, maimed and disfigured, wounded, lamed, and injured about his head, face, neck, back, and spine, and by reason whereof the said Charles Scheffer became and was sick, sore, lame, and disordered in mind and body, and in his brain and spine, and by means whereof phantasms, illusions, and forebodings of unendurable evils to come upon him, the said Charles Scheffer, were produced and caused upon the brain and mind of him, the said Charles Scheffer, which disease, so produced as aforesaid, baffled all medical skill, and continued constantly to disturb, harass, annoy, and prostrate the nervous system of him, the said Charles Scheffer, to wit, from the 7th day of December, A. D. 1874, to the 8th day of August, 1875, when said phantasms, illusions, and forebodings, produced as aforesaid, overcame and prostrated all his reasoning powers, and induced him, the said Charles Scheffer, to take his life in an effort to avoid said phantasms, illusions and forebodings, which he then and there did; whereby and by means of the careless, unskilfull and negligent acts of the said defendant aforesaid, the said Charles Scheffer, to wit, on the 8th day of August, 1875, lost his life and died, leaving him surviving a wife and children.

The Circuit Court sustained the demurrer, on the ground that the death of Scheffer was not due to the negligence of the railroad company in the judicial sense which made it liable under the statute; that the relation of such negligence was too remote as a cause of the death to justify recovery, the proximate cause being the suicide of the decedent-his death by his own immediate act. In this opinion we concur.

Two cases are cited by counsel, decided in this court, on the subject of the remote and proximate causes of acts where the liability of the party sued depends on whether the act is held to be the one or the other; and, though relied on by plaintiffs in error, we think they both sustain the judgment of the Circuit Court.

The first of these is that of The Insurance Company v. Tweed, 7 Wall. 44.

In that case a policy of fire insurance contained the usual clause of exception from liability for any loss which might occur "by means of any invasion, insurrection, riot, or civil commotion, or any military or usurped power, explosion, earthquake, or hurricane."

An explosion took place in the Marshall warehouse, which threw down the walls of the Alabama warehouse-the one insured, situated across the street from Marshall warehouse-and by this means, and by the sparks from the Eagle Mill, also fired by the explosion, facilitated by the direction of the wind, the Alabama warehouse was burned. This court held that the explosion was the proximate cause of the loss of the Alabama warehouse, because the fire ex

tended at once from the Marshall warehouse, where the explosion occurred. The court said that no new or intervening cause occurred between the explosion and the burning of the Alabama warehouse; that if a new force or power had intervened, sufficient of itself to stand as the cause of the misfortune, the other must be considered as too remote.

This case went to the verge of the sound doctrine in holding the explosion to be the proximate cause of the loss of the Alabama warehouse, but it rested on the ground that no other proximate cause was found.

In the case of the Milwaukee and St. Paul Ry. Co. v. Kellogg, 94 U. S. R. 469, the sparks from a steam ferry-boat of the company had set fire to an elevator, and the sparks from the elevator had set fire to Kellogg's saw-mill and lumber-yard, which were from three to four hundred feet from the elevator. The court below was requested to charge the jury that the sparks from the steamboat as a cause of the fire of the mill and lumber was too remote.

Instead of this, the court submitted to the jury to find "whether the burning of the mill and lumber was the result naturally and reasonably to be expected from the burning of the elevator; whether it was a result which under the circumstances would not naturally follow from the burning of the elevator, and whether it was the result of the continued effect of the sparks from the steamboat, without the aid of other causes not reasonably to be expected." The Supreme Court affirmed this ruling, and in commenting on the difficulty of ascertaining in each case the line between the proximate and remote causes of a wrong for which a remedy is sought, says: "It is admitted that the rule is difficult; but it is generally held that, in order to warrant a finding that negligence or an act not amounting to wanton wrong is the proximate cause of an injury, it must appear that the injury was the natural and probable consequence of the negligence or wrongful act, and that it ought to have been foreseen in the light of the attending circumstances." To the same effect is the language of the court in McDonald v. Snelling, 14 Allen, 294.

Bringing the case before us to the test of these principles, it presents no difficulty. The proximate cause of the death of Scheffer was his own act of self-destruction. It was, within the rule in both these cases, a new cause and a sufficient cause of death.

The argument is not sound which seeks to trace this immediate cause of the death, through the previous stages of mental aberration, physical suffering, and eight months' disease and medical treatment, to the original accident on the railroad. Such a course of possible or even logical argument would lead back to that "great first cause least understood," in which the train of all causation ends.

The suicide of Scheffer was not a result naturally and reasonably to be expected from the injury received on the train. It was not the natural and probable consequence, and could not have been foreseen in the light of the circumstances attending the negligence of the officers in charge of the train.

His insanity, as a cause of his final destruction, was as little the natural or probable result of the negligence of the railway officials as his suicide, and each of these are casual or unexpected causes, intervening between the act which injured him and his death. Judgment affirmed.

The principal case raises a very interesting question as to what is and what is not to be considered proximate cause. As the same point often arises in railway cases, it is proposed in the following note to collect the chief authorities which have arisen in the course of railroad litigation touching upon this topic.

Where the sparks of an engine passing upon the line of a railway have set on fire a neighboring building, and that in turn has set fire to another building either immediately adjacent or at some little distance, the question is often raised as to whether the owner of the second building has any cause of action against the railway company. Most of the cases assert that he has, the negligence of the company in failing to provide proper spark-arresters being usually deemed the proximate not the remote cause of the loss. Webb v. Rome, W. & O. R. Co., 49 N. Y. 420; McCoun v. N. Y. Cent. & Hudson River R. Co., 66 Barb. 338; Perley v. Eastern R. Co., 98 Mass. 414; Penna. R. R. Co. v. Hope, 80 Pa. St. 373; Penna. & N. Y. C. & R. Co. v. Lacey, 89 Pa. St. 458; Balt. & O. R. Co. v. Shipley, 39 Md. 251; P. W. & B. R. R. Co. v. Constable, 39 Md. 149; Annapolis & E. R. Co. v. Gantt, 39 Md. 115; Henry v. Southern Pacific R. R. Co., 50 Cal. 176; Longabough . Virginia City & T. R. Co., 9 Nev. 271; Burlington & M. R. Co. v. Westover, 4 Neb. 268; Poeppers v. Mo., K. & T. R. R. Co., 67 Mo. 715; Coates v. Mo., K. & T. R. Co., 61 Mo. 38; Toledo, P. & W. R. Co. v. Pindar, 53 Ill. 447; Fent. Toledo, P. & W. R. Co., 59 Ill. 349; Toledo, W. & W. R. Co. t. Murthersbaugh, 71 Ill. 572; Toledo, W. & W. R. Co. v. Maxfield, 72 Ill. 95; Hoyt v. Jeffers, 30 Mich. 181; Kellogg v. Chicago & N. W. R. Co., 26 Wis. 223; Delaware, Lack. & Western R. R. Co. v. Salmon, 10 Vroom. 299; Kuhn v. Jewett, 5 Stewart, 647; Milwaukee & St. P. R. Co. v. Kellogg, 94 U. S. 469; St. Jo. & D. C. R. Co. v. Chase, 11 Kans. 47; Atchison, Topeka & S. F. R. Co. v. Stanford, 12 Kans. 354; Atchison, Topeka & 8. F. R. Co. v. Bales, 16 Kans. 252; Smith v. R. Co., L. R. 5 C. P. 98.

If, however, any independent agency has intervened to communicate the fire from one structure to another the negligence of the company is regarded as causa remota and there is of course no liability. Thus where it appears that the fire has been carried by a high wind, this is held sufficient to exonerate the company. Penna. R. R. Co. v. Kerr, 62 Pa. St. 353; Toledo, W. & W. R. Co. v. Murthersbaugh, 71 Ill. 572; Fent v. Toledo, P. & W. R. Co., 59 Ill. 349. But it has also been held that a high wind is a contingency such as should be anticipated and provided against by the company. Kellogg . Chicago & N. W. R. Co., 26 Wis. 223.

Where there has been a cessation or extinction of the fire, and owing to the carelessness or negligence of the persons employed to extinguish it, it breaks out afresh, setting on fire other property beyond that at first ignited, this circumstance is held to constitute such an independent intervening cause as to prevent any liability on the part of the company. Doggett v. Richmond & D. R. Co., 78 N. C. 305. In Hoag v. Lake Shore & Mich. S. R. Co., 85 Pa.