the equal protection of the laws because those who can not legally be taxed are not taxed. Cahen v. Brewster, 203 U. S. 543.

The Illinois statute excluding foreign corporations from the exemption from an inheritance tax in favor of property devised for educational or religious uses, does not abridge privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States or deny the equal protection of the laws. The power of the state to classify objects of legislation and discriminate between classes is not unconstitutionally exercised by legislation which exempts the religious and educational institutions of the state from an inheritance tax and subjects educational and religious institutions of other states to the tax. Regarding alone the purposes of the institutions, no difference may be perceived between them, but regarding the spheres of their exercise, and benefits derived from their exercise, a difference is conspicuous. This benefit may have constituted the inducement of the legislation. The controversies in this case depend upon the power of the state over inheritances, and the conditions she may put upon them in the exercise of that power. In laying an inheritance tax the legislature may consider the relation which the person or corporation given the right of succession sustains to the deceased, to the property, or to the state, and may regulate the amount of the tax to be required in view of such relation, and in exercising this power may lay a tax on the right of one class of persons or corporations to take, and may deem it wise to impose no tax upon the right of other classes of persons or corporations to take. A Federal court would hesitate indeed to put impediments on this power or declare invalid any classification of persons or corporations that had reasonable regard to the purposes of the state and its legislation. And it cannot be said that if a state exempt property bequeathed for charitable or educational purposes from taxation it is unreasonable or arbitrary to require the charity to be exercised or the education to be bestowed within her borders and

for her people, whether exercised through persons or corporations. Board of Education v. Illinois, 203 U. S.

553.

§ 361. Inheritance tax. The equal protection of the laws is not denied by the imposition of the inheritance tax provided for by the New York law upon certain bequests of personalty by a nonresident decedent owning both real and personal property within the state because, under the statute as construed by the state courts, the tax could not be collected if the only property belonging to the decedent situated within the state state was personalty. Under the statute an inheritance tax may be collected where the nonresident decedent owns both personal and real property within the state of New York, and not where the only property belonging to the decedent situate within the state is personalty. But though the operation of the statutes creates a difference, this, even if intentional, is not of itself sufficient to invalidate the tax. The power of the state in respect to the matter of taxation is very broad, at least, so far as the Federal Constitution is concerned. It may exempt certain property from taxation while all other is subjected thereto. It may tax one class of property by one method of procedure and another by a different method. "The right to make exemptions is involved in the right to select the subjects of taxation and apportion the public burdens among them, and may consequently be understood to exist in the lawmaking power wherever it has not in terms been taken away. To some extent it must exist always, for the selection of subjects of taxation is, of itself, an exemption of what is not selected." Indeed, it may be laid down as a general rule that mere inequalities or exemptions in the matter of state taxation are not forbidden by the Federal Constitution. Beers v. Glynn, 211 U. S. 477.

§ 362. State taxation of meat-packing houses. The equal protection of the laws is not denied a foreign meat

packing house by the tax imposed on its local business under the North Carolina statute taxing "every meatpacking house doing business in this state," although at the point where such local business is carried on, persons selling meat-packing house products, but not doing a meat-packing house business either in North Carolina or elsewhere, are not subjected to the tax. The classification of meat-packing houses cannot be said to be an arbitrary selection or not to rest on reasonable grounds, and the Fourteenth Amendment was not intended to prevent a state from adjusting its system of taxation in all proper and reasonable ways, or, through the undoubted power of classification, to impose different taxes upon different trades and professions. By the act under consideration the tax is levied upon every packing house doing business in the state, which includes by its terms both domestic and foreign meat-packing houses. It appears that where plaintiff in error does business certain persons sell, both by wholesale and retail, packing-house products, and yet are not subjected to this tax, but also that those parties are not doing, either in North Carolina or elsewhere, a packing-house business. The statute cannot be said to deny the equal protection of the laws to meat-packing houses because houses packing vegetables and the like are not included in the same classification, and subject to the same tax. When the state exerts its power to tax it is not bound to tax all pursuits or all property that may be legitimately taxed for governmental purposes. Armour Packing Co. v. Lacy, 200 U. S. 226.

§ 363. Discrimination in taxing liquor sellers. The statutes of Texas do not deny to liquor sellers the equal protection of the laws because producers or manufacturers of domestic wines are exempt while such wines are in their hands, from the tax imposed and the bond required by preceding article regulating the sale of intoxicating liquors. So far as appears there is no natural distinction of classes among liquor sellers,-one class sell

ing their own domestic wines alone, another selling all intoxicants except domestic wines. Whatever other objections there may be to the laws, they do not deny the equal protection of the laws by forbidding, without justification, to one what they permit to another class. One slight qualification is necessary to what has been said. There is granted to the producers and manufacturers of wine from grapes grown in Texas an immunity in respect of that wine which is not granted to other sellers of the same wine. To that extent, but to that extent alone, favor is shown to a class. But this is not the class discrimination put forward and insisted upon. The attack is not mainly upon the distinction between producers and other sellers of domestic wine, but upon that between those producers and the sellers of other wine. The latter is not a true class distinction. Whether there is a difference in the scope of the state's general power to legislate and its power to tax or not, the former does not need an extended defense so far as the Fourteenth Amendment alone is concerned. Cox v. Texas, 202 U. S. 446.

§ 364. Validity of stock transfer tax. The New York law imposing a tax on corporate stock is not invalid under the Fourteenth Amendment, as making an arbitrary discrimination in favor of sales of other kinds of personal property, such as corporate bonds. This objection to a tax must be approached with the greatest caution. The general expressions of the amendment must not be allowed to upset familiar and long-established methods and processes by a formal elaboration of rules which its words do not import. Stamp acts necessarily are confined to certain classes of transactions, and to classes which, considered economically or from the legal or other possible points of view, are not very different from other classes that escape. Stamp taxes must be levied upon things that can be conveniently taxed. It is easy to say that justice and equality cannot be measured by the convenience of the taxing power. Yet economists do not con

demn stamp acts, neither does the Constitution. There is no discrimination in separating sales of stock from sales of other kinds of personal property. A fortiori do they warrant a tax on sales which is not intended to discriminate against or to discourage them, but simply to collect a revenue for the benefit of the whole community in a convenient way. New York ex rel. Hatch v. Reardon, 204 U. S. 152.

§365. Taxation of spirits in bond. The equal protection of the laws is not denied by the taxation of distilled spirits in bonded warehouses in the state, provided by the Kentucky statute, under which the warehouseman is made liable to pay the tax, and is given a lien on the property for the amount paid. It is contended that the power of the Federal Government over the spirits and the distillery, and its custody of them, is exclusive of the exercise of any other power whatever, and that such custody has the effect to withdraw, in legal contemplation, the property from the jurisdiction of the state, though it is actually present in the state, making it, indeed, as though it were outside of the territorial limits of the state. And it is hence concluded that plaintiff in error by the law of Kentucky is made to pay taxes on property belonging to another person outside of the jurisdiction of the state, and is thus denied the equal protection of the laws. The state however disclaims any purpose of collecting the taxes so long as the spirits are in the custody or under the lien of the Federal Government. The distinction made by the taxing power of the state between distilled spirits in bond and other property does not constitute a discrimination condemned by the Fourteenth Amendment. The power of the state to classify persons and property in its legislation is well established and the power is not transcended by the statute under review. Thompson v. Kentucky, 209 U. S. 340.

§ 366. Taxing wholesale dealers in oils. The Texas law imposing an occupation tax upon wholesale dealers