Statement of the Case. A trial by jury was waived, and the case submitted to the decision of the court, which found the following facts: "The defendant is a corporation of the State of Illinois, having its principal office in Chicago. Its business was, during all the time for which tax is charged, to furnish sleeping coaches and parlor and dining-room cars to the various railroad companies with which it contracted on the following terms: The defendant furnished the coaches and cars, and the railroad companies attached and made them part of their trains, no charge being made by either party against the other. The railroad companies collected the usual fare from passengers who travelled in their coaches and cars, and the defendant collected a separate charge for the use of the seats, sleeping berths and other conveniences. Business has been carried on continuously by the defendant in this way in Pennsylvania since February 17, 1870, and it has had about one hundred coaches and cars engaged in this way in the State during that time. The cars used in this State have, during all the time for which tax is charged, been running into, through and out of this State." Upon these facts the court held "that the proportion of the capital stock of the defendant invested and used in Pennsylvania is taxable under these acts; and that the amount of the tax may be properly ascertained by taking as a basis the proportion which the number of miles operated by the defendant in this State bears to the whole number of miles operated by it, without regard to the question where any particular car or cars were used;" and therefore gave judgment for the State. That judgment was affirmed, upon writ of error, by the Supreme Court of the State, for reasons stated in its opinion as follows: "We think it very clear that the plaintiff in error is engaged in carrying on such a business within this commonwealth, as to subject it to the statutes imposing taxation. While the tax on the capital stock of a company is a tax on its property and assets, yet the capital stock of a company and its property and assets are not identical. The coaches of the company are its property. They are operated within this State. They are daily passing from one end of the State to the other. They are used in performing the functions for Opinion of the Court. which the corporation was created. The fact that they also are operated in other States cannot wholly exempt them from taxation here. It reduces the value of the property in this State, justly subject to taxation here. This was recognized in the court below, and we think the proportion was fixed according to a just and equitable rule." 107 Penn. St. 156, 160. Pullman's Palace Car Company sued out a writ of error from this court, and filed six assignments of error, the substance of which was summed up in the brief of its counsel as follows: "The court erred in holding that any part of the capital stock of the Pullman Company was subject to taxation by the State of Pennsylvania by reason of its running any of its cars into, out of, or through the State of Pennsylvania in the course of their employment in the interstate transportation of railway passengers." Mr. Edward S. Isham and Mr. William Barry argued for the plaintiff in error at the argument on the 18th of October, 1888. Mr. Edward S. Isham and Mr. John S. Runnells argued for the plaintiff in error at the argument on the 6th of March, 1890. Mr. W. S. Kirkpatrick, Attorney General of the State of Pennsylvania, argued for the defendant in error at both arguments. Mr. John F. Sanderson, Deputy Attorney General of that State, was with him on the brief in both cases. MR. JUSTICE GRAY, after stating the case as above, delivered the opinion of the court. Upon this writ of error, whether this tax was in accordance with the law of Pennsylvania is a question on which the decision of the highest court of the State is conclusive. The only question of which this court has jurisdiction is whether the tax was in violation of the clause of the Constitution of the United States granting to Congress the power to regulate Opinion of the Court. commerce among the several States. The plaintiff in error contends that its cars could be taxed only in the State of Illinois, in which it was incorporated and had its principal place of business. No general principles of law are better settled, or more fundamental, than that the legislative power of every State extends to all property within its borders, and that only so far as the comity of that State allows can such property be affected by the law of any other State. The old rule, expressed in the maxim mobilia sequuntur personam, by which personal property was regarded as subject to the law of the owner's domicil, grew up in the Middle Ages, when movable property consisted chiefly of gold and jewels, which could be easily carried by the owner from place to place, or secreted in spots known only to himself. In modern times, since the great increase in amount and variety of personal property, not immediately connected with the person of the owner, that rule has yielded more and more to the lex situs, the law of the place where the property is kept and used. Green v. Van Buskirk, 5 Wall. 307, and 7 Wall. 139; Hervey v. Rhode Island Locomotive Works, 93 U. S. 664; Harkness v. Russell, 118 U. S. 663, 679; Walworth v. Harris, 129 U. S. 355; Story on Conflict of Laws, $550; Wharton on Conflict of Laws, §§ 297-311. As observed by Mr. Justice Story, in his commentaries just cited, "although movables are for many purposes to be deemed to have no situs, except that of the domicil of the owner, yet this being but a legal fiction, it yields, whenever it is necessary for the purpose of justice that the actual situs of the thing should be examined. A nation within whose territory any personal property is actually situate has an entire dominion over it while therein, in point of sovereignty and jurisdiction, as it has over immovable property situate there." For the purposes of taxation, as has been repeatedly affirmed by this court, personal property may be separated from its owner; and he may be taxed, on its account, at the place where it is, although not the place of his own domicil, and even if he is not a citizen or a resident of the State which imposes the tax. Lane County v. Oregon, 7 Wall. 71, 77; Railroad Co. Opinion of the Court. v. Pennsylvania, 15 Wall. 300, 323, 324, 328; Railroad Co. v. Peniston, 18 Wall. 5, 29; Tappan v. Merchants' Bank, 19 Wall. 490, 499; State Railroad Tax Cases, 92 U. S. 575, 607, 608; Brown v. Houston, 114 U. S. 622; Coe v. Errol, 116 U. S. 517, 524; Marye v. Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, 127 U. S. 117, 123. It is equally well settled that there is nothing in the Constitution or laws of the United States which prevents a State from taxing personal property, employed in interstate or foreign commerce, like other personal property within its jurisdiction. Delaware Railroad Tax, 18 Wall. 206, 232; Telegraph Co. v. Texas, 105 U. S. 460, 464; Gloucester Ferry Co. v. Pennsylvania, 114 U. S. 196, 206, 211; Western Union Telegraph Co. v. Attorney General of Massachusetts, 125 U. S. 530, 549; Marye v. Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, 127 U. S. 117, 124; Leloup v. Mobile, 127 U. S. 640, 649. Ships or vessels, indeed, engaged in interstate or foreign commerce upon the high seas, or other waters which are a common highway, and having their home port, at which they are registered under the laws of the United States, at the domicil of their owners in one State, are not subject to taxation in another State at whose ports they incidentally and temporarily touch for the purpose of delivering or receiving passengers or freight. But that is because they are not, in any proper sense, abiding within its limits, and have no continuous presence or actual situs within its jurisdiction, and, therefore, can be taxed only at their legal situs, their home port and the domicil of their owners. Hays v. Pacific Mail Steamship Co., 17 How. 596; St. Louis v. Ferry Co., 11 Wall. 423; Morgan v. Parham, 16 Wall. 471; Wiggins Ferry Co. v. East St. Louis, 107 U. S. 365; Gloucester Ferry Co. v. Pennsylvania, 114 U. S. 196. Between ships and vessels, having their situs fixed by act of Congress, and their course over navigable waters, and touching land only incidentally and temporarily; and cars or vehicles of any kind, having no situs so fixed, and traversing the land only, the distinction is obvious. As has been said by this court: "Commerce on land between the different Opinion of the Court. States is so strikingly dissimilar, in many respects, from commerce on water, that it is often difficult to regard them in the same aspect in reference to the respective constitutional powers and duties of the State and Federal governments. No doubt commerce by water was principally in the minds of those who framed and adopted the Constitution, although both its language and spirit embrace commerce by land as well. Maritime transportation requires no artificial roadway. Nature has prepared to hand that portion of the instrumentality employed. The navigable waters of the earth are recognized public highways of trade and intercourse. No franchise is needed to enable the navigator to use them. Again, the vehicles of commerce by water being instruments of intercommunication with other nations, the regulation of them is assumed by the national legislature. So that state interference with transportation by water, and especially by sea, is at once clearly marked and distinctly discernible. But it is dif ferent with transportation by land." Railroad Co. v. Maryland, 21 Wall. 456, 470. In Gloucester Ferry Co. v. Pennsylvania, on which the plaintiff in error much relies, the New Jersey corporation taxed by the State of Pennsylvania, under one of the statutes now in question, had no property in Pennsylvania except a lease of a wharf at which its steamboats touched to land and receive passengers and freight carried across the Delaware River; and the difference in the facts of that case and of this, and in the rules applicable, was clearly indicated in the opinion of the court as follows: "It is true that the property of corporations engaged in foreign or interstate commerce, as well as the property of corporations engaged in other business, is subject to taxation, provided always it be within the jurisdiction of the State." 114 U. S. 206. "While it is conceded that the property in a State belonging to a foreign corporation engaged in foreign or interstate commerce may be taxed equally with like property of a domestic corporation engaged in that business, we are clear that a tax or other burden imposed on the property of either corporation because it is used to carry on that commerce, or upon the transportation |