quired to pay a special license tax for the privilege of pursuing their calling. Thus, it is very common for legislatures to classify saloon-keepers by themselves, and exact from them a special license tax. But, as a citizen or person, the saloonkeeper stands before the law exactly in the same position as the doctor, the lawyer, the merchant, and every other citizen. Yet the power of the legislature to pick him out from all the other citizens of diverse trades and occupations, and compel him to pay an extraordinary tax for the privilege of conducting his business, cannot be questioned. The only limitation on the power is that all saloon-keepers shall be taxed. And so every other trade and business may be taxed, if all the persons pursuing the same trade or occupation are treated alike.
This power of classification has been repeatedly recognized by the United States supreme court in cases arising after the adoption of the fourteenth amendment. We do not think it is necessary to enter into any extended consideration of these cases, as the principles announced in and established by them are now thoroughly familiar both to the bench and bar. But it may be of use to refer, briefly, to several of them, which seem to us to establish the principles that must govern our decision in this case. In Barbier v. Connolly, 113 U. S. 27, 5 Sup. Ct. Rep. 357, a municipal ordinance prohibiting washing and ironing in public laundries, within defined territorial limits, between 10 o’clock in the evening and 6 in the morning, was held to be valid. This ordinance was evidently intended to operate against the Chinese in the city of San Francisco, but the court declared that, as it operated alike on all persons engaged in the same business within the same territory, it was not within the amendment. In Missouri v. Lewis, 101 U. S. 22, a statute prohibiting appeals to the supreme court of the state from certain designated counties in the state was held to be not obnoxious to the fourteenth amendment. In Hayes v. Missouri, 120 U. S. 68, 7 Sup. Ct. Rep. 350, a statute providing that in all capital cases, except in cities having a population of over 100,000 inhabitants, the state should be allowed eight peremptory challenges to jurors, and in such cities should be allowed fifteen, was held to be constitutional. In Dow v. Beidelman,
