Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

“ Virginia is not attempting to go beyond its power by indirection or to take anything from anybody. It simply is refusing to grant a foreign corporation a permit to transact local business without taking out a charter from the jurisdiction within which that business must be done. ”

“ The objection based on the Fourteenth Amendment is that the requirement of the Virginia Constitution deprives the appellant of its right to sue in the federal courts and to remove suits to them on the ground of diversity of citizenship. This plainly is inaccurate. The appellant is not deprived of any rights. It can do all that it ever could. If it sees fit to acquire a new personality under the laws of Virginia it cannot complain that the new person has not the same rights as itself. ”

“ The appellant's right to do interstate business is not questioned, but it was held by the Supreme Court of Appeals that being a foreign corporation created since the Constitution of the State went into effect in 1902, it was prohibited by that instrument from doing intrastate express business by the plain words of section 163. The appellant says that so construed the prohibition is a direct burden upon the interstate commerce which is its principal business, and therefore is void. ”