Those shares are property, and under existing laws are taxable property. They belong to the stockholders respectively and individually, and when for the sake of convenience in collecting the tax thereon, the corporation pays the state tax upon these shares into the state treasury, it pays the tax not upon the company's own property, nor for the company, but upon the property of each stockholder and for each stockholder respectively, by whom the company is entitled to be reimbursed. Hence when the owner of the shares is taxed on account of his ownership and the tax is paid for him by the company, the tax is not levied upon or collected from the corporation at all."

See, also, Hull v. Southern Development Co., supra.

Substantially similar laws for the taxing of stock in Maryland corporations were in force in Maryland at the time of the incorporation of the transportation company, and have been in force ever since.

All the claims of Federal right here asserted are embraced in and will be disposed of by passing on two propositions, which we shall consider separately.

The first proposition is that, as the authority of the State of Maryland to tax is limited by the effect of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States to persons and property within the jurisdiction of the State, and as the tax in question was not in rem against the stock but was in personam against the owner, the power attempted to be exercised as it imposed a personal liability was wanting in due process of law.

The Court of Appeals of Maryland disposed of this contention by deciding that it was in the power of the State of Maryland to fix for the purposes of taxation the situs of stock in domestic corporations held by a non-resident. It also held that, as such corporations were created by the State and were subject to its regulating authority, it was within its power to impose, as a condition to the right to acquire stock in such corporations, the duty of paying the taxes assessed on the

stock, and, moreover, that the State might compel the corporation to pay such taxes on behalf of the stockholder, and confer upon the corporation a right of action to obtain reimbursement from a stockholder when the payment was made. The court, in its opinion in this case, did not expressly elaborate the foregoing considerations, but contented itself by referring to previous decisions by it made. Among the cases so referred to was the case of American Coal Company v. Alleghany County Comrs., 59 Maryland, 185, 193, where it was said:

"The appellant is a Maryland corporation, deriving its existence, and all its powers and franchises, from this State. And such being the case, it is settled, that the sovereign power of taxation extends to everything which exists by the authority of the State, or which is introduced by its permission, except where such power is expressly or by necessary implication excluded. The separate shares of the capital stock of the corporation are authorized to be issued by the charter derived from the State, and are subject to its control in respect to the right of taxation; and every person taking such shares, whether resident or non-resident of the State, must take them subject to such state power and jurisdiction over them. Hence the State may give the shares of stock, held by individual stockholders, a special or particular situs for purposes of taxation, and may provide special modes for the collection of the tax levied thereon."

That it was rightly determined that it was within the power of the State to fix, for the purposes of taxation, the situs of stock in a domestic corporation, whether held by residents or non-residents, is so conclusively settled by the prior adjudications of this court that the subject is not open for discussion. Indeed, it was conceded in the argument at bar that no question was made on this subject. The whole contention is that, albeit the situs of the stock was in the State of Maryland for the purposes of taxation, it was nevertheless beyond the power of the State to personally tax the non-resident owner for and on account of the ownership of the stock, and to compel the

corporation to pay and confer upon it the right to proceed by a personal action against the stockholder in case the corporation did pay. Reiterated in various forms of expression, the argument is this, that as the situs of the stock within the State was the sole source of the jurisdiction of the State to tax, the taxation must be confined to an assessment in rem against the stock, with a remedy for enforcement confined to the sale of the thing taxed, and hence without the right to compel the corporation to pay or to give it, when it did pay, a personal action against the owner.

But these contentions are also in effect long since foreclosed by decisions of this court. National bank v. Commonwealth, 9 Wall. 353; Tappan v. Merchants' National Bank, 19 Wall. 490. In National Bank v. Commonwealth (pp. 361, 362), it was said:

"If the State cannot require of the bank to pay the tax on the shares of its stock it must be because the Constitution of the United States, or some act of Congress, forbids it.

"If the State of Kentucky had a claim against a stockholder of the bank who was a non-resident of the State, it could undoubtedly collect the claim by legal proceeding, in which the bank could be attached or garnished, and made to pay the debt out of the means of its shareholder under its control. This is, in effect, what the law of Kentucky does in regard to the tax of the State on the bank shares."

And it was further observed (p. 363):

"The mode under consideration is the one which Congress itself has adopted in collecting its tax on dividends, and on the income arising from bonds of corporations. It is the only mode which, certainly and without loss, secures the payment of the tax on all the shares, resident or non-resident; and, as we have already stated, it is the mode which experience has justified in the New England States as the most convenient and proper, in regard to the numerous wealthy corporations of those States."

But it is insisted that these rulings concerned taxation by the States of the shares of stock in national banks under the provisions of the national banking act, and are therefore not applicable. The contention is thus expressed:

"This act forms a part of the charter of the national banks, and provides for this liability. Charters can and frequently do undoubtedly provide for a personal liability of stockholders in various forms; the liability to creditors of the corporation is one of the common illustrations, and the liability may be thus imposed for a tax as well as for any other debt or obligation. The court therefore held [in the Tappan case, 19 Wall, 500] that under the national banking act the shareholders were liable, because that act 'made it the law of the property.' The liability arose, not out of the taxing power of the sovereign, but from the subscription or charter contract of the subject."

In substance, the contention is that the conceded principle has no application to taxation by a State of shares of stock in a corporation created by it, because by the Constitution of the United States the States are limited as to taxation to persons and things within their jurisdiction, and may not, therefore, impose upon a non-resident, by reason of his property within the State, a personal obligation to pay a tax. By the operation, therefore, of the Constitution of the United States it is argued the States are restrained from affixing, as a condition to the ownership of stock in their domestic corporations by non-residents, a personal liability for taxes upon such stock, since the right of the non-resident to own property in the respective States is protected by the Constitution of the United States, and may not be impaired by subjecting such ownership to a personal liability for taxation. But the contention takes for granted the very issue involved. The printiple upheld by the rulings of this court to which we have referred, concerning the taxation by the States of stock in national banks, is that the sovereignty which creates a corporation has the incidental right to impose reasonable regulations

concerning the ownership of stock therein, and that a regulation establishing the situs of stock for the purpose of taxation, and compelling the corporation to pay the tax on behalf of the shareholder, is not unreasonable regulation. Applying this principle, it follows that a regulation of that character, prescribed by a State, in creating a corporation is not an exercise of the taxing power of the State over persons and things not subject to its jurisdiction. And we think, moreover, that the authority so possessed by the State carries with it the power to endow the corporation with a right of recovery against the stockholder for the tax which it may have paid on his behalf. Certainly, the exercise of such a power is no broader than the well-recognized right of a State to affix to the holding of stock in a domestic corporation a liability on a non-resident as well as a resident stockholder in personam in favor of the ordinary creditors of the corporation. Flash v. Conn, 109 U. S. 371; Whitman v. Oxford National Bank, 176 U. S. 559; Nashua Savings Bank v. Anglo-American L. M, & A. Co., 189 U. S. 221, 230, and cases cited; Platt v. Wilmot, 193 U. S. 602, 612.

Whilst it is true that the liability of the non-resident stockholder in the case before us, as enforced by the laws of Maryland, was not directly expressed in the charter of the corporation, it nevertheless existed in the general laws of the State at the time the corporation was created, and, be this as it may, certainly existed at the time of the extension of the charter. This is particularly the case, since the constitution of Maryland, for many years prior to the extension of the charter of the transportation company, contained the reserved right to alter, amend and repeal. From all the foregoing it resulted that the provisions of the general laws and of the constitution of Maryland were as much a part of the charter as if expressly embodied therein. Nor can this conclusion be escaped by the contention that, as the provisions of the statute imposing on non-resident stockholders in domestic corporations a liability for taxes on their stock violated the Constitution of the United