Argument in support of the tax. speaking for the court, pretty clearly intimates the same view. Turning now to the immediate case before us. Is this railroad company entitled to exemption from State taxation. because it is an agency of the Federal government? It is a private corporation whose principal object is individual trade and individual profit. True, it is incorporated by Congress; but, when regard is had to the circumstances, this fact has no significancy. It was authorized to build a road from a point on the one hundredth meridian* to "the western boundary of Nevada Territory." At that time, and when the amendatory act of 1864 was passed, that whole section was territory not within any State. Again: there was a careful abstinence from the claim of any power to authorize the building of a road within any State. It was important, in order to secure all the advantages of the work, to construct parts of it and branches of it in States; but those parts and those branches were to be built by State corporations, and not by the Union Pacific Railroad Company appellant here. The Central Pacific, a California corporation, was to build from the Pacific coast, or the headwaters of the Sacramento, to the eastern boundary of California.† The Leavenworth, Pawnee, and Western, a Kansas corporation, was to build from the Missouri, near the Kansas River, to the one huudredth meridian. The Hannibal and St. Joseph, a Missouri corporation, with the consent of Kansas, was to build into that State, either under its own franchise or one derived from Kansas. And so on. Every mile of road to be built within the limits of any State was to be built by a State corporation. And these several corporations received the same aid in bonds and lands from the United States as did the railroad company which is now here as the appellant in this case. This corporation, we say, was formed for private trade * This point, as the Reporter understands it, is on a north and south line, dividing Nebraska about equally. † See Act of 1862, % 9. ‡ Id. ¿ Id. 10. Argument in support of the tax. and private profit. The service which it renders to the gov ernment is only an incident to its general business. Its operations are only accidentally, they are not inseparably connected with those of the government. Between it and the old Bank of the United States there is in this respect the widest possible distinction. The bank, by the system of exchanges which it maintained between different sections of the country, was converted into a convenient agency for transferring the public funds from place to place. Every bill drawn at one branch upon another, transmitted and paid, was an operation not only of which the government might avail itself, but it increased to a degree the facility of communication which the treasury had need of. And the . necessity to the treasury of the most facile and certain and efficient means for the transmission of funds was what justified the incorporation of the bank. But who shall say of this railroad company, that the running of its daily trains is thus needful or useful to the government? What are the services required of it by the government? They are stated to be to "transmit dispatches over said telegraph line, and transport mails, troops, and munitions of war, supplies, and public stores upon said railroad for the government." Every grant of land ever made by Congress to a railroad has provided in the same terms for the same services. Not to go farther back than 1850, the grant to Illinois in aid of what became the Illinois Central, contains this clause:* "The said railroad and branches shall be and remain a public highway for the use of the United States, free from toll or other charge, upon the transportation of any property or troops of the United States." And "The United States mail shall, at all times, be transported on the said railroad, under the direction of the Postoffice Department, at such price as the Congress may by law direct." *9 Stat. at Large, 467. Argument in support of the tax. These exact words are found in the grant to Missouri, for the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad,* in that to Arkansas and Missouri,t to Minnesota, Iowa,§ Florida and Alabama,|| Alabama,¶ Louisiana,** Wisconsin,†† Michigan,‡‡ Mississippi,§§ and so on down to the last act of the kind passed by Congress. The service stipulated for by Congress, to be rendered by every land-grant railroad in this country, is as large, as necessary, as valuable as that to be rendered by the company appellant. And yet, it will not be argued that all these agencies are rendering this service as the principal part of their business, and rendering only an incidental service to the public. Congress has not interposed any claim of exemption on behalf of the government of the character set up by the appellant. Neither the title of the act nor the terms used in the act have such reach or force. The objects of the act, as declared in the eighteenth section, are twofold: first, to promote the public interest, &c.; and secondly, to secure to the government the use of the road. One of these objects was evidently as prominent in the mind of Congress as the other. The circumstances of the company's incorporation are matters of common knowledge. Congress was moved to pass the original act by the consideration, at the time greatly agitating the public mind, that the Pacific States and Territories, by reason of their separation from the other parts of the country, might follow the example of the Southern States and seek to withdraw from the Union. To bind those distant parts more closely to the rest, by the bands of commerce, was the argument most pressed upon Congress. Facility in the transportation of the mails, troops, and stores of the government was rather the incident to this broad and patriotic policy. So that Argument in support of the tax. whether we regard the words of the acts or the circumstances of their passage, it is obvious that those services, on account of which exemption from State taxation is here claimed, must be considered incidental only. There is nothing in this record to show that the taxes here complained of will interfere with or impair the efficiency of the railroad company in performing the service required of it by the acts. And if we look to the effect of taxation generally, upon the services to be rendered, nothing appears at all within the rule as laid down by Miller, J., in the National Bank v. The Commonwealth.* Congress gave the corporation power to make contracts, which implies also the power to make debts. A creditor could sue his demand and recover judgment, and, by proper process, enforce it. These duties and liabilities would be as much interfered with by such judicial process as by sale for taxes;. and the supreme rights of the government may as reasonably be interposed in one case as the other. Those rights, however, find their protection in the fact that, whether the property remains in the corporation or passes to another, it is bound to those duties and liabilities; that is to say, the purchaser takes the property subject to them in both instances. There is no need of words to show that this tax is upon the property of the corporation and not upon its operations, and that it is not a constituent element in the government, but a third party made use of by it incidentally to render to it a certain service. A private corporation, organized for private trade and private profit, reudering to the government a service incidentally in the course of its private business, and not inseparably connected with the government operations; not a constituent part of the machinery of the government, but called in to discharge a duty for which it is compensated; not claimed by Congress as an agency entitled to freedom from State control; its efficiency to discharge its duty, not impaired by the taxation complained of, and its property * 9 Wallace, 353. Argument in support of the tax. only, and not its operations, subjected to taxes;-this company must submit, in common with all citizens and all corporations, to those reasonable exactions which the State must make to support the government which gives protection and value to its business and its property. But this case has been substantially decided by this court. In Osborne v. The United States Bank, it is emphatically said that the circumstance that the bank was a Federal corporation was not important. The question, and the only question, there treated as vital was, what was the nature of the services required of it by the government? In the bank-tax cases of Van Allen v. The Assessor and National Bank v. The Commonwealth, the distinction which we seek to maintain between what interests of a Federal corporation are taxable by a State and what non-taxable is clearly taken. In Thompson v. The Railroad Company,* the services, duties, liabilities, relations of the company in question, were all precisely the same as those of this plaintiff. They were all imposed by these same acts we have been considering. In the words of section nine, of the first: "The Leavenworth, Pawnee, and Western Railroad Company of Kansas, are hereby authorized to construct a railroad and telegraph line. . . upon the same terms and conditions, in all respects, as are provided in this act for the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad." And yet those services, duties, liabilities, relations, grants, and subsidies did not secure the exemption sought. It is true that the opinion of the Chief Justice was confined to a State corporation. But put the case of Osborne v. The Bank of the United States with that case and the rule of this case is directly established. The case of Thompson v. The Railroad Company holds that a State corporation, rendering the same services, subject to the same duties and liabilities, sustaining the same relations as this appellant, must pay its State taxes. The case of Osborne v. The Bank of the United States holds * 9 Wallace, 579. |