The United States is not by the Constitution expressly forbidden to deny to anyone the equal protection of the laws, as are the States by the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment. It would seem, however, that the broad interpretation which the prohibition as to "due process of law" has received is sufficient to cover very many of the acts which, if committed by the States, might be attacked as denying equal protection. Thus it has been repeatedly declared that enactments of a legislature directed against particular individuals or corporations, or classes of such, without any reasonable ground for selecting them out of the general mass of individuals or corporations, amounts to a denial of due process of law so far as their life, liberty or property is affected. One of the requirements of due process of law, as stated by the Supreme Court, is that the laws "operate on all alike, and do not subject the individual to an arbitrary exercise of the powers of government." 46

43 Braceville Coal Co. v. People, 147 III. 66. Quoted by McGehee, Due Process of Law, p. 141.

44 169 U. S. 366; 18 Sup. Ct. Rep. 383; 42 L. ed. 780.

45 In that case the court say: As the possession of property, of which a person can not be deprived, doubtless implies that such property may be acquired, it is safe to say that a state law which undertakes to deprive any class of persons of the general power to acquire property would also be obnoxious to the same provision. Indeed, we may go a step further, and say that as property can only be legally acquired, as between living persons, by contract, a general prohibition against entering into contracts with respect to property, or having as their object the acquisition of property, would be equally invalid.

In Smyth v. Ames47 the authorities are reviewed, and from them the general conclusion drawn that a state law "establishing rates for the transportation of persons or property by railroad that will not admit of the carrier earning such compensation as under all the circumstances is just to it and to the public, would deprive such carrier of its property without due process of law, and deny to it the equal protection of the laws."

Throughout this case, indeed, the requirement of due process is treated as necessarily including equal protection within its scope.

The further definition of equal protection is reserved for consideration in the chapters dealing with the constitutional limitations laid upon the States.