The court below having sustained a demurrer to the complaint as amended and given judgment accordingly, the sole question here is as to the sufficiency of the plaintiff in error’s pleading. The action was brought to recover of King county, state of Washington, and it» officers, a transportation tax on account of moneys paid to them for the transportation of freight and passengers on certain ferryboats maintained and operated by the county.

A statute of the state of Washington authorized any county within the state to, among other things—

By section 500 of the United States Revenue Act of 1917 ( 40 Stat. 314 ) it was, among other things, provided that from and after November 1, 1917, there should be—

The next section provided that the taxes imposed by section 500 should be paid by the person, corporation, partnership, or association paying for the services or facilities rendered. A similar requirement is made by section 501(a) of the Revenue Act of 1918 (Comp. St. Ann. *688 Supp. 1919, §' 6309%b). By section 503 it is provided, among other things, that every, person, corporation, partnership, or association, receiving any payments referred to in section 500, should collect the amount of the tax so imposed and should make monthly returns under oath in duplicate and pay the same to the collector of internal revenue of the district in which the principal office or place of business is located. By section 500 et seq. of the Revenue Act of 1918 (Comp. St. Ann. Supp. 1919, § 6309%a et seq.) the rates levied, assessed, and to be collected and paid after April 1, 1919, were increased, but with similar provisions in other respects, in so far as concerns the present case, as specified in the act of 1917.

Two contentions are made on behalf of the plaintiff in error: First, that the maintenance and operation of the ferries by the municipality was and is an ordinary business enterprise, as distinguished from a strictly governmental function, which latter (it is practically conceded) is protected by the federal Constitution against taxation; and, secondly, that if it be conceded that the maintenance and operation of the ferry in question is a purely governmental function, engaged in by the municipality and its officers for the benefit of the public at large, still the tax involved is imposed, not upon the state instrumentalities, but upon the persons paying for the transportation services, and that the state authorities could be legally required to collect the moneys for such transportation and pay the tax over to the United States.

We do not understand that the establishment and operation of a ferry by any governmental body can be properly regarded as a business enterprise, nor that there is or can be anything private about it. We understand it to be the duty-of the government, whether national, state, county, or city, to provide suitable roads, bridges, and ferries for the convenience of the public, arid that when such a government undertakes to do so, and to itself operate them, it is in the exercise of a strictly governmental function, and that the public have the right to the use thpreof upon complying with the terms and conditions legally prescribed. It has always been so, as we understand the law. In the case of Hart v. Bridgeport, 11 Fed. Cas. 681 , No. 6,149, 13 Blatchf. 289 , Judge Shipman, in speaking of the'line of demarcation between public governmental duties and private or corporate duties, said at page 682:

That it is a principle of the common law that ferries are publici juris, and can be granted by the sovereign power, see Conway et al. v. Taylor’s Executor, 66 U. S. (1 Black) 603 , 17 L. Ed. 191 ; Fanning v. Gregoire et al., 57 U. S. (16 How.) 524 , 14 L. Ed. 1043 ; Mills v. St. Clair Co. Com’rs, 3 Scam. (Ill.) 53; Carroll v. Campbell, 108 Mo. 550 , 17 S. W. 884 . In McQuillin on Municipal Corporations, vol. 1, § 227, p. 514, it is said:

At page 893, § 406, the same author says:

To the same effect are the decisions in the cases of East Hartford v. Hartford Bridge Co., 10 How. 511 , 13 L. Ed. 518 ; People v. S. F. & A. R. Co., 35 Cal. 606 ; City of New York v. Starin, 106 N. Y. 1 , 12 N. E. 631 ; Hackett v. Wilson, 12 Or. 25 , 6 Pac. 652 ; Reid v. Lincoln County, 46 Mont. 41 , 125 Pac. 429 ; Patterson v. Wollmann, 5 N. D. 608 , 67 N. W. 1040 , 33 L. R. A. 536.

The South Carolina case ( 199 U. S. 437 , 26 Sup. Ct. 110, 50 L. Ed. 261 , 4 Ann. Cas. 737), referred to 'by counsel on both sides, involved an excise tax levied by the general government on the sale of intoxicating liquor by agents designated by the state for its disposal, and the court—three justices dissenting—held that the business so entered upon and conducted by the state was of a private business nature, and therefore not exempt from an excise tax. But that,’in our opinion, was a wholly different case from the present one. The prevailing opinion did not undertake to overrule any of the numerous preceding decisions of the same court upon the general subject, but to distinguish them. One of the preceding cases was that of Ambrosini v. United States, 187 U. S. 1 , 23 Sup. Ct. 1, 47 L. Ed. 49 . In that case what was called the Dramshop Act of the Legislature of Illinois, passed for *690 the purpose of regulating the liquor traffic in protection of the public, and certain ordinances of the city of Chicago enacted thereunder, required bonds to be given by applicants as prerequisites to the issue of licenses permitting sales. The court held that the granting of such licenses was a strictly governmental function, and that the giving of the bonds was a part of the same transaction, and to tax either.would be to impair the efficiency of the state and municipal action, and therefore was unconstitutional.

In United States v. Baltimore & Ohio R. Co., 17 Wall. 322 , 21 L. Ed. 597 , the Supreme Court held that the United States could not tax revenues received by a municipal coxporation of the state of Maryland from funds invested by it in stock of a railroad company, for the reason that such investment was made by the city in its governmental capacity for the general benefit of its citizens. So, in the instant case, it seems clear to us that the establishment and operation of the ferry in question by the county of King under legislative grant of power for the benefit of the public was in pursuance of its strictly governmental function.

It is true that in the present case the tax was not imposed directly upon the county of King, but upon the persons paying to it the transportation charges; but it is obvious that the collection of those charges is at least one of the means which the county must resort to for the purpose of paying the costs of the ferry, which, if insufficient, must be made good from its other revenues or by general^ taxation. Hence it seems plain that the federal tax here involved is an interference with and a burden upon the governmental functions of the state.

The judgment is affirmed.