XVIII REPORT OF THE

these rich and powerful corporations shall be taxed on their business--
as other business interests are taxed, and that they be forced to contri-
bute to the support of the State Government, from which they claim
and enjoy protection, and by which they have been created. The-
charters of some of these Companies contained provisions that their
capital stock should be exempt from taxation, which provisions have
all been repeated by the Act of 1870, Chapter 362. Whether,
under the decisions which have been made upon this subject, it is
in the power of the Legislature to repeal and annul these provisions
of exemption in regard to stockholders of corporations, as in the
ease of other individuals, or not, I cannot conceive how said cor-
porations themselves can claim to be entirely exempt from taxation
on the business performed by them for profit. The fact that a mer-
chant actually pays the State tax on his stock of goods, docs not
exempt him from the license tax on the business he transacts in buying
and selling for profit. Although a lawyer may own large property,
and pay taxes on all of it, yet it is not claimed that he could success-
fully resist a license tax on his business, if the State chose to enact a
law to impose such a tax. If, therefore, we are to assume for argu-
ment sake, that the stockholders of these corporations cannot be legally
taxed on their shares of stock, it does not seem to me to preclude the
State from insisting that the corporation shall pay some tax on the
business it does in the State, for profit. If the stockholders cannot be
taxed because their shares are exempt under an irrepealable charter,.
and the property of the Company is exempt because it is covered by
the stock, as the Court of Appeals appears to have already decided,
(see 6 Gill, 295, 298,) and the business of the Company cannot
be taxed for both reasons, then bas the State indeed parted with
ber sovereignty to a large extent, and as these powerful corporations
purchase new property, and draw the same within the protection of
their aegis, the area of taxation will be gradually diminished, until the
remaining property-holders, who are not thus favored, will find it hard

to sustain the State Government for the benefit of the whole. I cannot

, think the view held by these corporations is tenable. If the fact of
payment of the tax on bis stock of goods will not protect the merchant
from taxation on his business, of which that same property is the sub-
ject matter, bow could exemption by law of his stock from taxation
(were such the case,) negative the State's power to impose on him a
license tax in the same manner. In the State of Pennsylvania, for
instance, and perhaps in other States, the Railroad Companies have
been required to pay a State tax on tbeir capital stock, a State tax on
their gross receipts, and a State tax on the tonnage transported over
them, all at the same time, and the Supreme Court of the United States