Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/276

240 240 HARVARD LAW REVIEW State," ^^ and paid into court the sum so admitted to be due, which was less than that held rightfully demanded under the statute. On the same day the court also decided Pullman's Palace Car Co. V. Pennsylvania,^^ which sanctioned Pennsylvania's method of tax- ing the cars that ran in and out of the state during the year. Most of the discussion in both the majority and minority opinions was concerned with the question whether the cars had a taxable situs in the state. The minority insisted that, since no specific cars were permanently located there, no cars were taxable. But the majority held it proper to estimate the average number of cars and to tax such car property, even though no single car stayed still long enough to give it a situs within the state. The tax purported to be based on a portion of the capital stock, but the court treated it as sub- stantially one on the cars as property. Surprisingly little was said about the method of assessment, which is described in the majority opinion as follows: "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 nimaber of miles, in that and other States, over which its cars were run." ^ Then follows the approving comment: "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 method of assessment was said to have been established by the State Railroad Tax Cases ^^ and Western Union Telegraph Co. v. Massachusetts.^'' But the former case raised no question under the commerce clause, and in the latter the only attention given to the method of assessment was to ascertain whether the state had correctly determined the proportion of the « 141 U. S. 40, 45, II Sup. Ct. Rep. 889 (1891). U. S. 18, II Sup. Ct. Rep. 876 (1891). t8 />^ " 141 U. S. 18, " Ibid., 18, 26. » Ibid. " Note 29, suitra.
 * Note 23, supra.