pairing the rights of private property; nor shall any discrimination be made in taxing different kinds of property; but all property subject to taxation shall be in proportion to the value of the property taxed.” 12 U. S. St. at Large, p. 241; Rev. St. U. S. § 1925. It is also urged that the law is unconstitutional because it violates the fourteenth amendment to the constitution of the United States. As we understand respondent’s contention, all the grounds of objection to the statute, in substance, amount to this: That a railroad company, in respect of its land grant, is in precisely the same condition as any other owner of real estate, and therefore the territorial legislature had no power to classify railroad companies by themselves, and provide for a method of taxing their land grants different from that provided for taxing the other lands in the territory. It is claimed that the placing of railroads in a class by themselves for purposes of taxation is, so far as railroad land grants are concerned, an arbitrary and unwarrantable classification, not justified either by any peculiar condition of circumstances of the land itself or the owners thereof. The taxing power is a legislative power, and passed to the territorial legisiature by virtue of the general grant of legislative power made by congress in the organic act.’ The power resided in the legislature without any limitations or restrictions whatsoever upon its exercise, except such limitations as were imposed by the organic act itself and the federal constitution. As was said by Chief Justice Marshall in the famous case of McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 415, the power to tax is “an absolute power, which acknowledges no other limits than those expressly prescribed in the constitution.” He adds that “it may be legitimately exercised on the objects to which it is applicable, to the utmost extent to which the government may choose to carry it.” See, also, State v. Lancaster, 4 Neb. 540; Bank v. Billings, 4 Pet. 514; Cooley, Tax’n, c. 2. The only limitations, then, upon the exercise of the taxing power by the territorial legislature are such as were prescribed either by the organic act or the federal constitution.
We do not think that § 6, which is the only provision of the organic act relied on by respondent, has any bearing on the
