Page:Henry Osborn Taylor, A Treatise on the Law of Private Corporations (5th ed, 1905).djvu/510

 § 485.] THE LAW OF PRIVATE CORPORATIONS. [CHAP. VIII. of a railroad company is not such a regulation of interstate com- merce as to be repugnant to the constitution, even though the gross receipts are made up in part from freights received for the transportation of merchandise from the state laying the tax to another state, or for transportation from another state into the state laying the tax ; nor is such a tax a tax on imports or exports. 1 And it is further held a state may tax the vehicles of commerce like other property owned by its citizens. 2 A state cannot impose a tax on commodities by reason of their foreign origin ; nor in any way discriminate in its tax laws against the products of other states brought within its boundaries. 3 The power of Congress to regulate commerce " continues until the commodity has ceased to be the subject of discriminating legislation by reason of its foreign charac- ter. That power protects it, even after it has entered into the state, from any burden imposed by reason of its foreign ori- that it recognized fully the power of a state to tax its own internal commerce, and the franchises, prop- erty, and business of its own corpo- rations, provided interstate trade and commerce were not thereby em- barrassed or restricted. lb. Com- pare Passenger Cases, 7 How. 283; Delaware Railroad Tax, 18 Wall. 206; Fargo v. Michigan, 121 U. S. 230; Philadelphia, etc., S. S. Co. v. Pennsylvania, 122 U. S. 326. 1 State Tax on Railway Gross Re- ceipts, 15 Wall. 284. See Ohio and Mississippi R. R. Co. v. Weber, 96 111. 443; see Maine v. Grand Trunk Ry. Co., 142 U. S. 217; Cumberland & Pa. R. R. Co. v. State, 92 Md. 668. Maryland granted to a railroad company a franchise to build a road from Baltimore to Washington, stip- ulating that the company should charge not more than two and a half dollars per passenger, and that at the end of every six months the company should pay to the state one-fifth of the amount received for the transportation of passengers. 490 Held, that such stipulation was not unconstitutional as being a restrict- ion on free intercourse and traffic between the states, and that it dif- fered from a tax or duty on the movements or operations of com- merce between the states. Railroad Co. v. Maryland, 21 Wall. 456; com- pare Osborne v. Mobile, 16 Wall. 479. 2 Wiggins Ferry Co. v. East St. Louis, 107 U. S. 365; compare Transportation Co. v. Wheeling, 99 U. S. 273; Passenger Cases, opinion of McLean, J., 7 How. 283, 402; Commonwealth v. Gloucester Ferry Co., 98 Pa. St. 10.-) ; Transit Co. v. Lynch, 18 Utah, 378. The fact that a bridge over a river is used for in- terstate commerce does not prevent a state from taxing so much of it as is within its borders. Pittsburg, etc., Ry. Co. v. B'd of Public Works, 167 U. S. 32; see Henderson Bridge Co. v. Henderson City, 173 U. S. 592. 3 Walling u. Michigan, 116 U. S. 446.