Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 5.djvu/566

554 FEDERAL REPORTER. �"located" within the states. They are also made sulject to taxation under state law. �It is far from correct to say that because they are organized under a law of the United States they possess the same and equal rights in ail the states. They must carry on their busi- ness of banking at the place named in their organization cer- tificate, and nowhere else. For ail practical purposes they exercise their functions only within the limita of the state in which they are located, and should one of them attempt to carry on business outside of those limita, it would find itself completely without authoriiy. For these reasons we conclude that a national bank, being a corporation created by compe- tent authority and located within a state, with power to trans- aot business there and not elsewhere, should be regarded, for ail the purposes of the jurisdiction of the federal courts, as on an equal footing with state corporations. This view is mueh strengthened by the provision of the bank act already quoted, which gives these corporations power to sue and be sued "in any court of law or equity as fully as natural per- sons." If this provision is construed as excluding ail cases by or against a national bank which could not be brought by or against a natural person, it must also, we think, be con- strued as including ail cases in which the court would have jurisdiction if the bank were a natural person. In other words, congress, by enacting this provision, must be supposed to have assumed that these corporations would be regarded for jurisdictional purposes as citizens of the states where located, for otherwise it would have been impossible to confer upon them the right to sue in ail courts "as fully as natural persons." It must have been understood by congress that they were, for jurisdictional purposes, to stand in the attitude and possess the attributes of natural persons. �It is insinuated that jurisdiction in this case is, by neces- sary implication, excluded by the terms of section 629 of the Eevised Statutes, which, among other things, provides that the circuit courts shall have original jurisdiction "of ail suits by or against any banking association established in the dis- ����