Opinion of the Court. the law of Congress. And undoubtedly a corporation of one State, employed in the business of the general government, may do such business in other States without obtaining a license from them. Thus, to take an illustration from the opinion of Mr. Justice Bradley in a case recently decided by him, "if Congress should employ a corporation of ship builders to construct a man-of-war, they would have the right to purchase the necessary timber and iron in any State of the Union," and, we may add, without the permission and against the prohibition of the State. Stockton v. Baltimore and New York Railroad Co., 32 Fed. Rep. 9, 14. These exceptions do not touch the general doctrine declared as to corporations not carrying on foreign or interstate commerce, or not employed by the government. As to these corporations, the doctrine of Paul v. Virginia applies. The Colorado corporation does not come within any of the excep tions. Therefore, the recognition of its existence in Pennsylvania, even to the limited extent of allowing it to have an office within its limits for the use of its officers, stockholders, agents, and employés, was a matter dependent on the will of the State. It could make the grant of the privilege conditional upon the payment of a license tax, and fix the sum according to the amount of the authorized capital of the corporation. The absolute power of exclusion includes the right to allow a conditional and restricted exercise of its corporate powers within the State. Bank of Augusta v. Earle, 13 Pet. 519; Lafayette Insurance Co. v. French, 18 How. 404; Ducat v. Chicago, 10 Wall. 410 St. Clair v. Cox, 106 U. S. 350. We do not perceive the pertinency of the position advanced by counsel that the tax in question is void as an attempt by the State to tax a franchise not granted by her, and property or business not within her jurisdiction. The fact is otherwise. No tax upon the franchise of the foreign corporation is levied, nor upon its business or property without the State. A license tax only is exacted as a condition of its keeping an office within the State for the use of its officers, stockholders, agents, and employés; nothing more and nothing less; and Opinion of the Court. in what way this can be considered as a regulation of interstate commerce is not apparent. 2. Nor does the clause of the Constitution declaring that the "citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States" have any bearing upon the question of the validity of the license tax in question. Corporations are not citizens within the meaning of that clause. This was expressly held in Paul v. Virginia. In that case it appeared that a statute of Virginia, passed in February, 1866, declared that no insurance company not incorporated under the laws of the State should carry on business within her limits without previously obtaining a license for that purpose, and that no license should be received by the corporation until it had deposited with the treasurer of the State bonds of a designated character and amount, the latter varying according to the extent of the capital employed. No such deposit was required of insurance companies incorporated by the State for carrying on their business within her limits. A subsequent statute of Virginia made it a penal offence for a person to act in the State as an agent of a foreign insurance company without such license. One Samuel Paul, having acted in the State as an agent for a New York insurance company without a license, was indicted and convicted in a Circuit Court of Virginia, and sentenced to pay a fine of $50. On error to the Court of Appeals of the State the judgment was affirmed, and to review that judgment the case was brought to this court. Here it was contended, as in the present case, that the statute of Virginia was invalid by reason of its discriminating provisions between her corporations and corporations of other States; that in this particular it was in conflict with the clause of the Constitution mentioned, that the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States. But the court answered, that corporations are not citizens within the meaning of the clause; that the term citizens, as used in the clause, applies only to natural persons, members of the body politic owing allegiance to the State, not to artificial persons created by the legislature, and possessing only Opinion of the Court. such attributes as the legislature has prescribed; that the privileges and immunities secured to citizens of each State in the several States by the clause in question are those privileges and immunities which are common to the citizens in the latter States under their constitution and laws by virtue of their citizenship; that special privileges enjoyed by citizens in their own States are not secured in other States by that provision; that it was not intended that the laws of one State should thereby have any operation in other States; that they can have such operation only by the permission, express or implied, of those States; that special privileges which are · conferred must be enjoyed at home, unless the assent of other States to their enjoyment therein be given; and that a grant of corporate existence was a grant of special privileges to the corporators, enabling them to act for certain specified purposes as a single individual, and exempting them, unless otherwise provided, from individual liability, which could therefore be enjoyed in other States only by their assent. In the subsequent case of Ducat v. Chicago, 10 Wall. 410, the court followed this decision, and observed that the power of the State to discriminate between her own domestic corporations and those of other States, desirous of transacting business within her jurisdiction, was clearly established by it and the previous case of Augusta v. Earle, 13 Pet. 519, and added that "as to the nature or degree of discrimination, it belongs to the State to determine, subject only to such limitations on her sovereignty as may be found in the fundamental law of the Union." Philadelphia Fire Association v. New York, 119 U. S. 110, 120. 3. The application of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution to the statute imposing the license tax in question is not more apparent than the application of the clause of the Constitution to the rights of citizens of one State to the privileges and immunities of citizens in other States. The inhi bition of the amendment that no State shall deprive any person within its jurisdiction of the equal protection of the laws was designed to prevent any person or class of persons from being singled out as a special subject for discriminating Opinion of the Court. and hostile legislation. Under the designation of person there is no doubt that a private corporation is included. Such corporations are merely associations of individuals united for a special purpose, and permitted to do business under a particular name, and have a succession of members without dissolution. As said by Chief Justice Marshall, "The great object of a corporation is to bestow the character and properties of individuality on a collective and changing body of men." Providence Bank v. Billings, 4 Pet. 514, 562. The equal protection of the laws which these bodies may claim is only such as is accorded to similar associations within the jurisdiction of the State. The plaintiff in error is not a corporation within the jurisdiction of Pennsylvania. The office it hires is within such jurisdiction, and on condition that it pays the required license tax it can claim the same protection in the use of the office that any other corporation having a similar office may claim. It would then have the equal protection of the law so far as it had anything within the jurisdiction of the State, and the constitutional amendment requires nothing more. The State is not prohibited from discriminating in the privileges it may grant to foreign corporations as a condition of their doing business or hiring offices within its limits, provided always such discrimination does not interfere with any transaction by such corporations of interstate or foreign commerce. It is not every corporation, lawful in the State of its creation, that other States may be willing to admit within their jurisdiction or consent that it have offices in them; such, for example, as a corporation for lotteries. And even where the business of a foreign corporation is not unlawful in other States the latter may wish to limit the number of such corporations, or to subject their business to such control as would be in accordance with the policy governing domestic corporations of a similar character. The states may, therefore, require for the admission within their limits of the corporations of other States, or of any number of them, such conditions as they may choose, without acting in conflict with the concluding provision of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment. As to the meaning and extent of that section of the amend Syllabus. ment see Barbier v. Connolly, 113 U. S. 27; Soon Hing v. Crowley, 113 U. S. 703; Missouri v. Lewis, 101 U. S. 22, 30; Missouri Pacific Railway Co. v. Humes, 115 U. S. 512; Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U. S. 356; Hayes v. Missouri, 120 U. S. 68. The only limitation upon this power of the State to exclude a foreign corporation from doing business within its limits, or hiring offices for that purpose, or to exact conditions for allowing the corporation to do business or hire offices there, arises where the corporation is in the employ of the federal government, or where its business is strictly commerce, interstate or foreign. The control of such commerce, being in the federal government, is not to be restricted by state authority. Judgment affirmed. Mr. JUSTICE BRADLEY was not present at the argument of this cause and took no part in its decision. MAYNARD v. HILL. APPEAL FROM THE SUPREME COURT OF THE TERRITORY OF WASHINGTON. No. 194. Argued February 16, 17, 1888.- Decided March 19, 1888. A territorial statute of Oregon, passed in 1852, dissolving the bonds of matrimony between husband and wife, the husband being at the time a resident of the Territory, was an exercise of "the legislative power of the Territory upon a rightful subject of legislation," according to the prevailing judicial opinion of the country and the understanding of the legal profession at the time when the act of Congress establishing the territorial government was passed, August 14, 1848, 9 Stat. 323. The general practice in this country of legislative bodies to grant divorces stated. The granting of divorces being within the competency of the legislature of the Territory, its motives in passing the act in question cannot be inquired into. Having jurisdiction to legislate upon the status of the hus |