review must be subjected to still greater restrictions and limitations. Our constitution was framed by intelligent and practical men, who were well acquainted with the organization and operation of the system of state government in all portions of the Union; and when they declared that taxation shall be equal and uniform throughout the state, they must have referred to such general taxation as in the other states is commonly imposed alike upon all property for the purpose of defraying the expenses of the government of the state, or of some local municipal corporation. They could not possibly have intended, that the entire aggregate amount of taxation upon persons or the value of property in every town and city of the state, should be equal to, and uniform with, the amount in every other town and city-that property in the city of San Francisco or in the city of Sacramento, for instance, should, in the aggregate, be burdened for state, county, town, and city purposes, with no greater assessments than the secluded ranchos in the country. If they did, they have given to us a perfectly impracticable instrument. But it is unnecessary now to decide how far this clause may be properly extended; and it is alluded to here, only for the purpose of showing that it could not have been intended by the convention that the constitution should cover so broad a ground as was claimed for it on the argument.

The statute in question, however, does not provide for what is commonly understood by the term "tax," as is meant in the constitution by the term "taxation." The word "tax," in its common acceptation, denotes some compulsory exaction which a government makes upon persons or property within its jurisdiction, for the supply of the public necessities. It is ordinarily assessed beforehand at stated periods, and collected at appointed times. Its payment is enforced, sometimes, by imprisonment of the person; at others, by the sale of property. The law in question, however, partakes of none of these qualities. It does not require the exaction, at all events, of anything. The foreigner may pay, or need not pay, the specified amount, depending upon his own option whether he will or will not engage in mining operations. The amount is not assessed at all; it is not required to be paid at a definite time; and its non-payment is enforced neither by imprisonment nor sale of property. It is demanded only as often as a party of his own accord chooses to perform certain acts. It is in the nature of a fee of a specific sum, exacted for licenses to sell certain goods or liquors, or to exercise certain trades, or to exhibit some curiosity, or for

admission to certain privileges, or as a toll for the enjoyment of certain facilities, none of which is regarded in the light of a tax in the common acceptation of the term. It is a license fee, and not a tax, and unless the statute be constitutional, we see not how any license law can be constitutional. But does any one doubt that the state may, for general purposes, exact license fees in the above and similar cases, or may empower counties, cities, and towns to demand them in order to defray their local expenses? We can not believe that it was the intention of the framers of the constitution not to grant such power to the state government.

It may be said that, under this construction, the legislature might abuse the power with which it is clothed by the constitution, to depress some departments of business and elevate others. But the same objection may be made to all other attributes of the legislative body. Power is always liable to be abused, to whatsoever individual or body of men it may be in. trusted. The sure guaranty against the abuse of this power, as of all other powers, exists in the fact that an unjust, partial, or impolitic law can, under our system of government, be of but short duration, after it shall have begun to react upon the people and lessen or destroy the business of the community. Judgment affirmed.

POWER OF STATE TO EXACT LICENSES, AND CHARGE THEREFOR.-Practically speaking, licenses are required, and charges made therefor, for two purposes: 1. For regulation; 2. For revenue: Cooley on Taxation; and license laws are sustainable on either or both of two grounds: 1. On the police power of a state; and, 2. On the power of taxation: See Wallack v. Mayor etc. of New York, 3 Hun, 84. A license is issued under the police power, but the exac tion of a license fee, with a view to revenue, would be an exercise of the power of taxation: Cooley's Const. Lim. *201. The extent of these powers is therefore only limited by the constitutions, state and national; and in order to ascertain its true bounds, it is but necessary to inquire what constitutional provisions are or are not violated by license laws. In exercising the power to pass license laws, a state may act directly, by the legislature itself passing the law, or it may confer the authority upon municipal corporations, unless limited by its constitution: See Dillon on Mun. Corp., sec. 357; but where the authority is thus conferred, a distinction is made between the power to license merely for the purpose of regulation, and the power to exact license fees with a view to revenue; for in the former case the license can not be used for purposes of raising revenue, unless such seems to be the legislative intent, and only a reasonable fee for the license and the labor attending its issue can be charged; while in the latter case, where a revenue authority seems to be conferred, the extent of the tax, if not limited in the charter, is left to the judgment and discretion of the municipal government, provided it is not made so heavy as to be prohibitory: Cooley on Tax. 408; Dillon on Mun. Corp., secs. 357-360; Cooley's Const. Lim. *201; and see City of Cin cinnati v. Bryson, 45 Am. Dec. 593.

1. Violation of the Constitutional Requirement of Equality and Uniformity of Taxation. The rule seems to be well settled, that the requirement of license fees as a prerequisite to carry on any business or calling does not violate the provision universally found in the state constitutions providing that taxation shall be equal and uniform, licensing the sale of liquors: Durach's Appeal, 62 Pa. St. 491; State v. Cassidy, 22 Minn. 312; S. C., 21 Am. Rep. 765; State v. Klein, 22 Minn. 328; Walters v. Duke, 31 La. Ann. 668; Pleuler v. State, 11 Neb. 547; Rochester v. Upman, 19 Minn. 108; Thomasson v. State, 15 Ind. 449; Bancroft v. Dumas, 21 Vt. 456; Wiley v. Owens, 39 Ind. 429; Lovingston v. Board of Trustees, 99 Ill. 564; Holberg v. Macon, 55 Miss. 112; Mason v. Trustees of Lancaster, 4 Bush, 406; Keeler v. State, 11 Md. 525; St. Louis v. Wehrung, 46 Ill. 392; State v. Rolle, 31 La. Ann. 991; foreign insurance companies, or their agents: Slaughter v. Commonwealth, 13 Gratt. 767; People v. Thurber, 13 Ill. 554; Walker v. Springfield, 94 Id. 364; Leavenworth v. Booth, 15 Kan. 627; lawyers: Simmons v. State, 12 Mo. 268; S. C., 49 Am. Dec. 131; auctioneers: People v. Coleman, 4 Cal. 46, citing the principal case; license tax graded on monthly sales of merchants: Sacramento v. Crocker, 16 Cal. 119; act prohibiting a sale by sample and without license, in a certain city, of goods of a non-resident having no place of business in that city: Mork v. Commonwealth, 6 Bush, 397; but quære, whether this would not be a violation of other constitutional provisions, e. g., a regulation of commerce; license tax imposed upon gas companies for inspection: Cincinnati Gas Light etc. Co. v. State, 18 Ohio St. 237; law requiring that a license should not be granted to a theatrical manager, except on condition of a certain contribution to a public institution; Charity Hospital v. De Bar, 11 La. Ann. 385; Charity Hospital v. Stickney, 2 Id. 550; but a license tax on all persons keeping over fifty pounds of powder was held to be not uniform, and therefore void: Parish of New Orleans v. Cochran, 20 Id. 373. In applying the foregoing rule, however, a distinction would seem to exist, in the nature of things, although perhaps not observed to its fullest extent by the cases, between license laws passed for purposes of regulation and license laws for purposes of revenue. If the law is enacted under the police power, there would seem to be no question as regards the inapplicability of the constitutional provision under discussion. In Pleuler v. State, 11 Neb. 547, 570, Lake, J., after an exhaustive examination of the cases, says: "Many other cases of like import are at hand and might be referred to, but these are enough to show that the idea of a license fee or imposition not being within the ordinary or constitutional signification of the word 'tax' is no new doctrine, evolved now for the first time by this court to meet an exigency of this case, but that it is a well-understood rule which the courts have constantly applied in dealing with questions similar to the one we are now considering. To our minds, it is clear that the restriction relied on has no proper application to this case, and that the authority given by the act regulating the sale of spirituous liquors is but a proper exercise of the police power of the state, of which, by the constitution, the legislature is made the sole custodian and dispenser, and not an exercise of the power of taxation:" See State v. Cassidy, 22 Minn. 312; S. C., 21 Am. Rep. 765; Keeler v. State, 11 Md. 525. Where, on the other hand, a license law is enacted with a view to revenue, it would seem that it should at least operate with uniformity alike upon all upon whom it is imposed: See Sacramento v. Crocker, 16 Cal. 119; Wiley v Owens, 39 Ind. 429; Slaughter v. Commonwealth, 13 Gratt. 767; Durach's Ap peal, 62 Pa. St. 491.

2. License Laws Conflicting with the Power of Congress to Regulate Commerce with Foreign Nations and among the Several States.-The power of congress to

regulate foreign and interstate commerce may be infringed upon by a license law, and if so, such law is unconstitutional. Thus, an act of a state legislature requiring importers of foreign goods by the bale or package to take out a license, paying a prescribed fee therefor, is invalid: Brown v. Maryland, 12 Wheat. 419; but statutes requiring a license fee for the sale of spirituous liquors, although they may have been imported, but not applying to the importer himself, do not assume to regulate commerce: License Cases, 5 How. 504. A statute requiring payment of a license tax from persons dealing in the sale of goods, wares, and merchandise, which are not the growth, produce, or manufacture of the state, by going from place to place within the state to sell the same, and requiring no such license tax from persons selling in a similar way goods which are the growth, produce, or manufacture of the state, conflicts with the power vested in congress: Welton v. State, 91 U. S. 275; this case was reluctantly followed in Higgins v. Rinker, 47 Tex. 381, where an annual tax for selling liquors in certain quantities was required, with a proviso that the act should not be so construed as to include wines and beer manufactured in the state. The case was also followed in Tiernan v. Rinker, 102 U. S. 123, in construing the above Texas legislation. But the constitutional provision is not violated by a law requiring a license tax from "all peddlers of sewing machines, without regard to the place of growth or produce of material or of manufacture:" Machine Co. v. Gage, 100 Id. 676; Webber v. Commonwealth, 33 Gratt. 898. This provision of the constitution is frequently found construed in state reports with reference to license laws; thus, in Cole v. Randolph, 31 La. Ann. 535, an act imposing a license tax on peddlers doing business within the state was held to be no violation, the act making no discrimination between non-residents and citizens; and a similar ruling was made in Commonwealth v. Ober, 12 Cush. 493. An act requiring any person engaged in hiring laborers in the state, for employment beyond its limits, to procure a license, paying a certain sum therefor, is constitutional: Shepperd v. County Commissioners, 59 Ga. 535. In Sears v. Board of Commissioners, 36 Ind. 267, it was held that an act requiring a license fee, based upon the amount of capital employed, to be paid by peddlers who were not residents of the state, to vend foreign merchandise, was valid; but as to this, quære. An ordinance requiring payment of an annual license of "every express company or railroad company who shall do business in the city of Mobile, and whose business extends beyond the limits of the state," is constitutional: Osborne v. Mayor etc. of Mobile, 44 Ala. 493, affirmed in 16 Wall. 479; and an act requir ing steamboat agents and agents of railroad companies, other than the proper officers of railroads terminating at a taxing district, to pay a privilege tax, is likewise valid: Lightburne v. Taxing District, 4 Lea, 219. Laws requiring licenses of foreign insurance companies are not unconstitutional on this ground: Paul v. Virginia, 8 Wall. 168; People v. Thurber, 13 Ill. 554. Ordinances or laws providing that no person shall maintain a ferry for transporting persons and property from points in a state to the Canada shore without obtaining a license therefor, were held not to be regulations of interstate or foreign commerce, in Chilvers v. People, 11 Mich. 43; and People v. Babcock, 11 Wend. 586. In the License Tax Cases, 5 Wall. 462, legislation of congress requiring licenses of a particular business-for example, the sale of liquors or lottery-tickets-was held not to give authority to carry it on, and was therefore not open to the objection that it was a regulation of the internal trade of a state.

3. Imposts or Duties Imposed by State License Laws on Imports or Exports.-In Brown v. Maryland, supra, the act of the state requiring a license

of an importer of foreign goods by the bale or package was also held invalid, under the constitution of the United States, as imposing a duty on imports; while in License Cases, Commonwealth v. Ober, and Sears v. Board of Commissioners, the several acts were held not to be within the constitutional prohibition.

4. Rights of Citizens of Each State to Enjoy the Privileges and Immunities of Citizens of the Several States, Affected by License Laws.-A law requiring foreign insurance companies to obtain a license, and pay a certain sum therefor, before such companies can carry on business within a state, is not in conflict with the clause of the constitution of the United States which declares, that "the citizens of each state shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states:" Paul v. Virginia, 8 Wall. 168; Ducat v. Chicago, 10 Id. 410; Slaughter v. Commonwealth, 13 Gratt. 767. But a tax under the name of a license, discriminating between resident and non-resident traders, was held to be in conflict with this clause, in Ward v. Maryland, 12 Wall. 418; and see Sears v. Board of Commissioners, 36 Ind. 267. In Mork v. Commonwealth, 6 Bush, 397, however, an act prohibiting a sale by sample and without license, in a certain city, of goods of a non-resident having no place of business in that city, does not violate the constitutional guaranty; but as to this, quære; see also Commonwealth v. Smith, 6 Id. 303.

5. Miscellaneous Constitutional Provisions, whether Violated by License Laws.-In Thomasson v. State, 15 Ind. 449, a law regulating the sale of liquor by exacting a license fee was held not to be in conflict with the provision of the state constitution declaring that "privileges and immunities which, upon the same terms, shall not equally belong to all citizens, may not be granted." This constitutional provision was held to have no application to non-residents, where an act required a license fee, based upon the amount of capital employed, to be paid by peddlers who were not residents of the state, to vend foreign merchandise: Sears v. Board of Commissioners, 36 Id. 267; but the act is obviously unconstitutional on other grounds: See supra. In State v. Gisch, 31 La. Ann. 544, there was held to be no unconstitutional discrimination in forbidding markets within certain prescribed limits, and imposing a license on all who kept markets outside of those limits. Enforcing payment of a license, as a condition of doing business in liquors, is not a taking of private property for public use without compensation: Rochester ▼. Upman, 19 Minn. 108; and see Metropolitan Board of Excise v. Barrie, 34 N. Y. 657, 666. A law requiring a sum of money to be paid for a license to sell spirituous liquors is not a tax within the meaning of the state constitution declaring that "no tax shall be levied except in pursuance of law." It was further held, in Thomasson v. State, supra, that the law regulating the sale of liquor by exacting a license fee was imposed in the exercise of the rightful police power, and was not within the prohibition of the constitution against local and special taxation for state purposes. An act requiring junkdealers to take out a license is not in conflict with the provision of the state constitution authorizing a license tax upon certain enumerated kinds of business, "and all other business which can not be reached by the ad valorem system:" Hirsh v. Commonwealth, 21 Gratt. 785; and under the same provision, keepers of billiard-saloons may be required to take out a license and pay a tax thereon: Lewellen v. Lockharts, 21 Id. 570. Under the federal constitution and laws giving a patentee an exclusive right to sell and manufacture the patented article, a state has no right to require a license in order to a sale of the right to make and manufacture the article: State v. Butler, 3