Opinion of the Court. commerce among the several States. The plaintiff in error contends that its cars could be taxed only in the State of Illinois, in which it was incorporated and had its principal place of business. No general principles of law are better settled, or more fundamental, than that the legislative power of every State extends to all property within its borders, and that only so far as the comity of that State allows can such property be affected by the law of any other State. The old rule, expressed in the maxim mobilia sequuntur personam, by which personal property was regarded as subject to the law of the owner's domicil, grew up in the Middle Ages, when movable property consisted chiefly of gold and jewels, which could be easily carried by the owner from place to place, or secreted in spots known only to himself. In modern times, since the great increase in amount and variety of personal property, not immediately connected with the person of the owner, that rule has yielded more and more to the lex situs, the law of the place where the property is kept and used. Green v. Van Buskirk, 5 Wall. 307, and 7 Wall. 139; Hervey v. Rhode Island Locomotive Works, 93 U. S. 664; Harkness v. Russell, 118 U. S. 663, 679; Walworth v. Harris, 129 U. S. 355; Story on Conflict of Laws, §550; Wharton on Conflict of Laws, §§ 297-311. As observed by Mr. Justice Story, in his commentaries just cited, "although movables are for many purposes to be deemed to have no situs, except that of the domicil of the owner, yet this being but a legal fiction, it yields, whenever it is necessary for the purpose of justice that the actual situs of the thing should be examined. A nation within whose territory any personal property is actually situate has an entire dominion over it while therein, in point of sovereignty and jurisdiction, as it has over immovable property situate there." For the purposes of taxation, as has been repeatedly affirmed by this court, personal property may be separated from its owner; and he may be taxed, on its account, at the place where it is, although not the place of his own domicil, and even if he is not a citizen or a resident of the State which imposes the Lane County v. Oregon, 7 Wall. 71, 77; Railroad Co. Opinion of the Court. v. Pennsylvania, 15 Wall. 300, 323, 324, 328; Railroad Co. v. Peniston, 18 Wall. 5, 29; Tappan v. Merchants' Bank, 19 Wall. 490, 499; State Railroad Tax Cases, 92 U. S. 575, 607, 608; Brown v. Houston, 114 U. S. 622; Coe v. Errol, 116 U. S. 517, 524; Marye v. Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, 127 U. S. 117, 123. It is equally well settled that there is nothing in the Constitution or laws of the United States which prevents a State from taxing personal property, employed in interstate or foreign commerce, like other personal property within its jurisdiction. Delaware Railroad Tax, 18 Wall. 206, 232; Telegraph Co. v. Texas, 105 U. S. 460, 46; Gloucester Ferry Co. v. Pennsylvania, 114 U. S. 196, 206, 211; Western Union Telegraph Co. v. Attorney General of Massachusetts, 125 U. S. 530, 549; Marye v. Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, 127 U. S. 117, 124; Leloup v. Mobile, 127 U. S. 640, 649. Ships or vessels, indeed, engaged in interstate or foreign commerce upon the high seas, or other waters which are a common highway, and having their home port, at which they are registered under the laws of the United States, at the domicil of their owners in one State, are not subject to taxation in another State at whose ports they incidentally and temporarily touch for the purpose of delivering or receiving passengers or freight. But that is because they are not, in any proper sense, abiding within its limits, and have no continuous presence or actual situs within its jurisdiction, and, therefore, can be taxed only at their legal situs, their home port and the domicil of their owners. Hays v. Pacific Mail Steamship Co., 17 How. 596; St. Louis v. Ferry Co., 11 Wall. 423; Morgan v. Parham, 16 Wall. 471; Wiggins Ferry Co. v. East St. Louis, 107 U. S. 365; Gloucester Ferry Co. v. Pennsylvania, 114 U. S. 196. Between ships and vessels, having their situs fixed by act of Congress, and their course over navigable waters, and touching land only incidentally and temporarily; and cars or vehicles of any kind, having no situs so fixed, and traversing the land only, the distinction is obvious. As has been said by this court. "Commerce on land between the different Opinion of the Court. States is so strikingly dissimilar, in many respects, from commerce on water, that it is often difficult to regard them in the same aspect in reference to the respective constitutional powers and duties of the State and Federal governments. No doubt commerce by water was principally in the minds of those who framed and adopted the Constitution, although both its language and spirit embrace commerce by land as well. Maritime transportation requires no artificial roadway. Nature has prepared to hand that portion of the instrumentality employed. The navigable waters of the earth are recognized public highways of trade and intercourse. No franchise is needed to enable the navigator to use them. Again, the vehicles of commerce by water being instruments of intercommunication with other nations, the regulation of them is assumed by the national legislature. So that state interference with transportation by water, and especially by sea, is at once clearly marked and distinctly discernible. But it is different with transportation by land." Railroad Co. v. Maryland, 21 Wall. 456, 470. In Gloucester Ferry Co. v. Pennsylvania, on which the plaintiff in error much relies, the New Jersey corporation taxed by the State of Pennsylvania, under one of the statutes now in question, had no property in Pennsylvania except a lease of a wharf at which its steamboats touched to land and receive passengers and freight carried across the Delaware River; and the difference in the facts of that case and of this, and in the rules applicable, was clearly indicated in the opinion of the court as follows: "It is true that the property of corporations engaged in foreign or interstate commerce, as well as the property of corporations engaged in other business, is subject to taxation, provided always it be within the jurisdiction of the State." 114 U. S. 206. "While it is conceded that the property in a State belonging to a foreign corporation engaged in foreign or interstate commerce may be taxed equally with like property of a domestic corporation engaged in that business, we are clear that a tax or other burden imposed on the property of either corporation because it is used to carry on that commerce, or upon the transportation Opinion of the Court. of persons or property, or for the navigation of the public waters over which the transportation is made, is invalid and void, as an interference with, and an obstruction of, the power of Congress in the regulation of such commerce." 114 U. S. 211. Much reliance is also placed by the plaintiff in error upon the cases in which this court has decided that citizens or corporations of one State cannot be taxed by another State for a license or privilege to carry on interstate or foreign commerce within its limits. But in each of those cases the tax was not upon the property employed in the business, but upon the right to carry on the business at all, and was therefore held to impose a direct burden upon the commerce itself. Moran v. New Orleans, 112 U. S. 69, 74; Pickard v. Pullman's Southern Car Co., 117 U. S. 34, 43; Robbins v. Shelby Taxing District, 120 U. S. 489, 497; Leloup v. Mobile, 127 U. S. 640, 644. For the same reason, a tax upon the gross receipts derived from the transportation of passengers and goods between one State and other States or foreign nations has been held to be invalid. Fargo v. Michigan, 121 U. S. 230; Philadelphia & Southern Steamship Co. v. Pennsylvania, 122 U. S. 326. The tax now in question is not a license tax or a privilege tax; it is not a tax on business or occupation; it is not a tax on, or because of, the transportation, or the right of transit, of persons or property through the State to other States or countries. The tax is imposed equally on corporations doing business within the State, whether domestic or foreign, and whether engaged in interstate commerce or not. The tax on the capital of the corporation, on account of its property within the State, is, in substance and effect, a tax on that property. Gloucester Ferry Co. v. Pennsylvania, 114 U. S. 196, 209; Western Union Telegraph Co. v. Attorney General of Massachusetts, 125 U. S. 530, 552. This is not only admitted, but insisted on, by the plaintiff in error. The cars of this company within the State of Pennsylvania are employed in interstate commerce; but their being so employed does not exempt them from taxation by the State; and the State has not taxed them because of their being so employed, but because of their being within its territory and Opinion of the Court. jurisdiction. The cars were continuously and permanently employed in going to and fro upon certain routes of travel. If they had never passed beyond the limits of Pennsylvania, it could not be doubted that the State could tax them, like other property, within its borders, notwithstanding they were employed in interstate commerce. The fact that, instead of stopping at the state boundary, they cross that boundary in going out and coming back, cannot affect the power of the State to levy a tax upon them. The State, having the right, for the purposes of taxation, to tax any personal property found within its jurisdiction, without regard to the place of the owner's domicil, could tax the specific cars which at a given moment were within its borders. The route over which the cars travel extending beyond the limits of the State, particular cars may not remain within the State; but the company has at all times substantially the same number of cars within the State, and continuously and constantly uses there a portion of its property; and it is distinctly found, as matter of fact, that the company continuously, throughout the periods for which these taxes were levied, carried on business in Pennsylvania, and had about one hundred cars within the State. The mode which the State of Pennsylvania adopted, to ascertain the proportion of the company's property upon which it should be taxed in that State, was by taking as a basis of assessment such proportion of the capital stock of the company as the number of miles over which it ran cars within the State bore to the whole number of miles, in that and other States, over which its cars were run. This was a just and equitable method of assessment; and, if it were adopted by all the States through which these cars ran, the company would be assessed upon the whole value of its capital stock, and no more. The validity of this mode of apportioning such a tax is sustained by several decisions of this court, in cases which came up from the Circuit Courts of the United States, and in which, therefore, the jurisdiction of this court extended to the deter mination of the whole case, and was not limited, as upon writs of error to the state courts, to questions under the Constitution and laws of the United States. |