a right in one government to destroy what there is a right in another to preserve. The power to tax would involve the power to destroy, and the power to destroy might defeat and render useless the power to create. There would be a plain repugnance in conferring on one government the power to control the constitutional measures of another, which other, with respect to those very measures, was declared to be supreme over that which exerts the control. If the right of the states to tax the means employed by the general government did really exist, then the declaration that the constitution and the laws made in pursuance thereof should be the supreme law of the land, would be empty and unmeaning declamation. If the states might tax one instrument employed by the government in the execution of its powers, they might tax every other instru- *427 ment. They might tax the mail; they might tax the mint; they might tax the papers of the custom-house; they might tax judicial process; they might tax all the means employed by the government, to an excess which would defeat all the ends of government.

The claim of the states to tax the Bank of the United States was thus denied, and shown to be fallacious; and that there was a manifest repugnancy between the power of Maryland to tax, and the power of Congress to preserve, the institution of the Branch Bank. A tax on the operations of the bank was a tax on the operations of an instrument employed by the government of the Union to carry its powers into execution, and was consequently unconstitutional. A case could not be selected from the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, superior to this one of M'Culloch v. The State of Maryland, for the clear and satisfactory manner in which the supremacy of the laws of the Union have been maintained by the court, and an undue assertion of state power overruled and defeated.

But the court were careful to declare that their decision was to be received with this qualification; that the states were not deprived of any resources of taxation which they originally possessed, and that the restriction did not extend to a tax paid by the real property of the bank, in common with the real property within the state; nor to a tax imposed upon the interest

which the citizens of Maryland might hold in that institution, in common with other property of the same description throughout the state. (a)

The decision pronounced in this case against the validity of the Maryland tax, was made on the 7th of March, 1819; and it was on the 7th of February preceding that the legislature of the state of Ohio imposed a similar tax, to the amount of fifty thousand dollars annually, on the Branch Bank of the United States established in that state. Notwithstanding this decision, the officers of the state of Ohio proceeded to levy the tax, and

that act brought up before the Supreme Court a renewed * 428 discussion and consideration of the legality * of such a tax. (b) It was attempted to withdraw this case from the influence and authority of the former decision, by the suggestion that the Bank of the United States was a mere private corporation, engaged in its own business, with its own views, and that its great end and principal object were private trade and private profit. It was admitted, that if that were the case, the bank would be subject to the taxing power of the state, as any individual would be. But it was not the case. The bank was not created for its own sake, or for private purposes. It has never been supposed that Congress could create such a corporation. It was not a private, but a public corporation, created for public and national purposes, and as an instrument necessary and proper for carrying into effect the powers vested in the government of the United States. The business of lending and dealing in money for private purposes was an incidental circumstance, and not the primary object; and the bank was endowed with this faculty, in order to enable it to effect the great public ends of the institution, and without such faculty and business the bank would want a capacity to perform its

(a) In Berney v. Tax Collector, 2 Bailey's S. C. Rep. 654, a state tax on dividends arising from stock in the Bank of the United States, owned by a citizen of the state, was adjudged to be constitutional. And in the case of the Union Bank v. The State, 9 Yerger, 490, it was held, that state bank stock, as individual property, might be taxed, when owned by residents of the state; but that the stock held by non-resident stockholders was not subject to the taxing power of the state, for it must be a tax in personam, and stock is a chose in action, and has no locality, and follows the person of the owner.

(b) Osborn v. Bank of the United States, 9 Wheaton, 738.

public functions. And if the trade of the bank was essential to its character as a machine for the fiscal operations of the government, that trade must be exempt from state control, and a tax upon that trade bears upon the whole machine, and was, consequently, inadmissible, and repugnant to the constitution. In Weston v. The City Council of Charleston, (a) it was decided, that a state tax on stock issued for loans made to the United States, was unconstitutional. The court considered it to be a tax on the power given to Congress to borrow money on the credit of the United States, and thereby to diminish the means of the United States used in the exercise of its powers, and that it was, consequently, repugnant to the constitution. By declaring the powers of the general government supreme, the constitution has shielded its action in the exercise of its *429 powers, from any restraining or controlling action of the local governments. (b)

(7.) The state governments have no jurisdiction in places ceded to the United States.

Places ceded to the United States.

The state governments may likewise lose all jurisdiction over places purchased by Congress, by the consent of the legislature of the state, for the erection of forts, dock-yards, lighthouses, hospitals, military academies, and other needful buildings. (c) The question which has arisen on the subject was as to the effect of the proviso or reservation, usually annexed to the consent of the state, that all civil and criminal process, issued under the authority of the state, might be executed on the lands so ceded, in like manner as if the cession had not been made. This point was much discussed in the Circuit Court of

(a) 2 Peters's U. S. Rep. 449.

(b) A decision upon the same principle was made in the case of Dobbins v. The Commissioners of Erie County, 16 Peters's R. 435, where it was held, that an officer of the United States was not liable to be rated and assessed for his office by state rates and levies; for this would be to diminish the recompense secured by law to the officer. In the case of Melcher v. The City of Boston, in the Sup. Judicial Court of Massachusetts, March, 1845, 9 Metcalf, R. 73, it was stated as a question undecided, whether a tax assessed upon the income of an officer of the United States would not be lawful, and not within the case of Dobbins. It was decided in the Massachusetts case, that a clerk in a post-office was not an officer exempted from taxation of his income.

the United States in Rhode Island, in the case of The United States v. Cornell. (a) It was held that a purchase of lands within the jurisdiction of a state, with the consent of the state, for the national purposes contemplated by the constitution, did, ipso facto, by the very terms of the constitution, fall within the exclusive legislation of Congress, and that the state jurisdiction was completely ousted. What, then, is the true intent and effect of the saving clause annexed to the cessions? It does not imply the reservation of any concurrent jurisdiction or legislation, or that the state retained a right to punish for acts done within the ceded lands. The whole apparent object of the proviso was to prevent the ceded lands from becoming a sanctuary for fugitives from justice, for acts done within the acknowledged jurisdiction of the state; and such permission to execute process is not incompatible with exclusive sovereignty and jurisdiction. The acceptance of a cession, with this reservation, amounts to an agreement of the new sovereign to *430 permit the free exercise of such process, as being quoad hoc his own process. This construction has been frequently declared by the courts of the United States, and it comports entirely with the intention of the parties; and upon any other construction the cession would be nugatory and void. Judge Story doubted whether Congress were even at liberty, by the terms of the constitution, to purchase lands with the consent of a state, under any qualification of that consent, which would deprive them of exclusive legislation over the place. The courts of the United States have sole and exclusive jurisdiction over an offence committed within a ceded place, notwithstanding the ordinary reservation of the right to execute civil and criminal process of the state. That was no reservation of any sovereignty or jurisdiction.

Congress, in exercising powers of exclusive legislation over a ceded place or district, unite the powers of general with those of local legislation. The power of local legislation carries with it, as an incident, the right to make that power effectual. Congress exercises that particular local power, like all its other powers, in its high character as the legislature of the Union;

(a) 2 Mason's Rep. 60, 91. United States v. Davis, 5 Ibid. 356, S. P.

and its general power may come in aid of these local powers. It is, therefore, competent for Congress to try and punish an offender for an offence committed within one of those local districts, in a place not within such jurisdiction; or to provide for the pursuit and arrest of a criminal escaping from one of those districts after committing a felony there; or to punish a person for concealing, out of the district, a felony committed within it. All these incidental powers are necessary to the complete execution of the principal power; and the Supreme Court, in Cohens v. Virginia, (a) held, that they were vested in Congress.

* 431

It follows, as a consequence, from this doctrine of the federal courts, that state courts cannot take cognizance of any offences committed within such ceded districts; and, on the other hand, that the inhabitants of such places cannot exercise any civil or political privileges under the laws of the state, because they are not bound by those laws. This has been so decided in the state courts. (b) But if, in any case, the United States have not actually purchased, and the state has not, in point of fact, ceded the place or territory to the United States, its jurisdiction remains, notwithstanding the place may have been occupied, ever since its surrender by Great Britain, by the troops of the United States, as a fort or garrison. The Supreme Court of New York accordingly held, in the case of The People v. Godfrey, (c) that they had jurisdiction of a murder committed by one soldier upon another within Niagara fort. Nor would the purchase of the land by the United States be alone sufficient to vest them with the jurisdiction, or to oust that of the state, without being accompanied or followed with the consent of the legislature of the state. This was so decided in the case of The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. Young. (d)

(a) 6 Wheaton, 426-429.

(b) Commonwealth v. Clary, 8 Mass. Rep. 72. Same v. Young, 1 Hall's Journal of Jurisprudence, 53.

(c) 17 Johns. Rep. 225.

(d) 1 Hall's Journal of Jurisprudence, 47. The jurisdiction of the United States over the lands within places ceded by a state, was fully and learnedly examined by Mr. Justice Woodbury, in the Circuit Court of the United States in Massachusetts, in October, 1845, in the case of The United States v. Ames, 1 Wood. & Minot's R. 76. It was adjudged, that if the United States own lands in any state, and there be no cession of the jurisdiction, the lex rei sita applicable to the land-owners of the state, governs, as to rights and remedies, equally applying to non-residents and citizens,