a different measure of damages than B, and it permits social legislation in all of its varieties. In other words, the state may distinguish, select, and classify objects of legislation, and necessarily this power must have a wide range of discretion, but not without limitation. The Fourteenth Amendment was not intended to compel the state to adopt an iron rule of equal protection. It may exempt certain classes of property, may impose different specific taxes upon different trades and professions, and vary the rates of excise upon different products, so long as the regulations proceed within reasonable limits and general usage. The Federal Constitution imposes no restraints on the state in regard to unequal taxation. The rule of equality permits many practical inequalities. In a classification for governmental purposes there cannot be an exact exclusion or inclusion of persons and things. There are three main classes in the Illinois statute, based on lineal and collateral relationship, and strangers to the blood and distant relatives. The third class is again divided into four classes dependent upon the amount of the estate received. The differences between the first two classes are substantial, and "bear a just and proper relation to the attempted classification." The tax is one on the succession and not on property. The determination of the amount of the exemptions is a legislative and not a judicial function. The tax on legacies to strangers to the blood of the interstate depends on the amount of the legacy. There are four classes created, and manifestly there is equality between the members of each class. When the legacies differ in substantial extent, if the rate increases, the benefit increases to greater degree. If there is inequality it must be because the members of a class are arbitrarily made such and burdened as such upon no distinction justifying it. This is claimed. The tax is not in proportion to the amount but varies with the amounts arbitrarily fixed. One who is given a legacy of $10,001 by the deduction of the tax receives $99.04 less than one who is given a legacy of $10,000. This is not

contrary to the rule of equality of the Fourteenth Amendment, which does not require exact equality of taxation. It only requires that the law imposing it shall operate on all alike under the same circumstances. The tax is not on money, it is on the right to inherit, and hence a condition of inheritance, and may be graded according to the value of that inheritance. All license laws and all specific taxes have in them an element of inequality, nevertheless they are universally imposed and their legality has never been questioned. Magoun v. Illinois Trust & Savings Bank, 170 U. S. 283.

§ 345. Penalty for nonpayment of taxes. A penalty of 50 per cent for nonpayment of taxes by a telegraph company, doing business in the state, which is imposed by Indiana act of March 6, 1893, is not unconstitutional as a denial to such company of the equal protection of the law, or as an arbitrary classification, or as a deprivation of property without due process of law. The necessity of classifying the subjects of taxation in order to reach uniform and just results, as far as possible, is not denied; nor that the infliction of penalties on delinquency is a usual and legitimate mode of compelling the prompt payment of taxes. The supreme court of Indiana was of opinion that by reason of the differences in the nature of these companies and the uses to which their property was devoted in the prosecution of their business from other tax payers and their property and business, the legislature was justified in placing them in a class by themselves and subjecting them to the particular method of effecting collection by means of penalties and suit for recovery of judgment for the delinquent taxes with penalties added. The amount of the penalty was a matter for the legislature to determine in its discretion. The Supreme Court was unable to discover any ground for holding that the Federal Constitution was violated by the law, and agreed in the view which the supreme court of the state expressed in the premises. Western Union Telegraph Co. v. State of Indiana, 165 U. S. 304.

§ 346. State tax law as to banks constitutional. Lack of uniformity in the result of a state tax law as to banks does not violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution as denying to any person the equal protection of the laws, at least when the inequality comes from the election of certain taxpayers to avail themselves of privileges offered to all.

The lack of uniformity charged against the statute consists not in the terms and conditions expressed in the statute, but only in the possible results of its operation. Upon all bank shares, whether state or national, rest the ordinary state tax of 4 mills. To every bank, state and national, and all alike, is given the privilege of discharging all tax obligations by collecting from its stockholders and paying 8 mills on the dollar upon the par value of its stock. If the bank has a large surplus, and its stock is in consequence worth five or six times its par value, naturally it elects to collect and pay the 8 mills, and thus in fact it pays at a less rate on the actual value of the property than the bank without surplus, and whose stock is only worth par. So it is possible, under the operation of the law, that one bank may pay at a less rate upon the actual value of its banking property than another; but the banks which do not make the election, whether state or national, pay no more than the regular tax. The result of the election under the circumstances is simply that those electing pay less. But this lack of uniformity in the result furnishes no ground of complaint under the Federal Constitution. Indeed, the whole argument of a right under the Federal Constitution to challenge a tax law on the ground of inequality in the burdens resulting from the operation of the law is put at rest by the decision in Bell's Gap R. Co. v. Pennsylvania, 134 U. S. 232, 237. Merchants' and Manufacturers' National Bank v. Pennsylvania, 167 U. S. 461.

§ 347. Taxation of mortgagee's interest in land. The taxation of mortgaged real estate by taxing the mort

gagee's interest therein to him, and the rest to the mortgagor, is not a double taxation, nor does it make such discrimination between mortgagors and mortgagees, nor between resident and nonresident mortgagees, as to deny the latter the equal protection of the laws. The clear intent and effect of the statute is as follows: The personal obligation of the mortgagor to the mortgagee is not taxed at all. The mortgage and the debt secured thereby are taxed, as real estate, to the mortgagee, not beyond their real cash value, and only so far as they represent an interest in the real estate mortgaged. The debt is not taxed separately, but only together with the mortgage; and is considered as indebtedness within the state for no other purpose than to enable the mortgagor to deduct the amount thereof from the assessment upon him, in the same manner as other indebtedness within the state is deducted. And the mortgagee, as well as the mortgagor, is entitled to have deducted from his own assessment the amount of his indebtedness within the state. The statute, which is drawn in question, expressly forbids any taxation of the promissory note, or other instrument of writing, which is the evidence of the debt secured by the mortgage; and, with equal distinctness, provides for the taxation as real estate, of the mortgage interest in the land. Although the right which the mortgage transfers in the land covered thereby is not the legal title, but only an equitable interest and by way of security for the debt, it appears to be clear upon principle, and in accordance with the weight of authority, that this interest, like any other interest, legal or equitable, may be taxed to its owner (whether resident or nonresident) in the state where the land is situated, without contravening any provision of the Constitution of the United States. Savings & Loan Society v. Multnomah County, 169 U. S. 421.

§ 348. Forfeiting lands for nonpayment of taxes. The exemption by the Virginia constitution of tracts of land

of less than 1,000 acres, from a provision for forfeiture of larger tracts by failure for five successive years to have them charged on the land books with taxes due thereon, does not constitute such a discrimination against the owners of larger tracts as to deny them the equal protection of the laws. The evil intended to be remedied by the constitution and laws of West Virginia was the persistent failure of those who owned or claimed to own large tracts of land, patented in the seventeenth century, or early in the eighteenth century, to put them on the land books, so that the extent and boundaries of such tracts could be easily ascertained by the officers charged with the duty of assessing and collecting taxes. Where the tract was a small one, the probability was that it was actually occupied by someone, and its extent of boundary could be readily ascertained for purposes of assessment and taxation. It can be well understood why one policy could be properly adopted as to large tracts which the necessities of the public revenue did not require to be prescribed as to small tracts. Said Mr. Justice Harlan in speaking for the court: "The judiciary should be very reluctant to interfere with the taxing systems of a state, and should never do so unless that which the state attempts to do is in palpable violation of the constitutional rights of the owners of property. Under this view of our duty, we are unwilling to hold that the provision referred to is repugnant to the clause of the Fourteenth Amendment forbidding a denial of the equal protection of the laws." King v. Mullins, 171 U. S. 404.

§ 349. Discrimination in taxes as a denial of the equal protection of the laws. A manufacturer engaged in the business of refining sugar is not denied the equal protection of the laws because of the discrimination made by the Louisiana constitution imposing a license tax upon manufacturers engaged in such business, but exempting from the tax those who refine the products of their own plantations. The act in question undoubtedly discriminates