MASTER AND SERVANT.

Assault and battery, committed by a servant sent to take personal property from the possession of a person who claims to own it, the assault being made by the servant in the attempt to gain possession of such property, renders the master liable in damages, although he had instructed his servant not to assault any one and not to break the law. McClung v. Dearborne, S. Ct. Pa., April 28, 1890.

MECHANIC'S LIENS.

Sub-contractor is not entitled to a lien against a property which the principal contractor has agreed to build and deliver to the owner, free of all liens; the former is bound by the original contract and is presumed to have notice of its terms. Schroeder v. Galland, S. Ct. Pa., April 21, 1890.

NEGLIGENCE.

Mercantile agency, notwithstanding a contract exempting it from liability for loss caused by the neglect or other act of any officer or agent of the company," is liable for a loss occasioned by an error in its published book, when such error arose in printing the book, and not in collecting information for it, since the printing of the book is the act of the company itself. Crew v. The Bradstreet Co., S. Ct. Pa., April 7, 1890.

Statute of Maryland gives an action for the death of a person, caused by the wrongful act or neglect of another, to the surviving wife, husband, parent or child of the deceased, while the West Virginia Statute provides that such action shall be brought in the name of the personal representative; an administrator appointed in Maryland cannot sue in Maryland under the West Virginia Statute for the death of his intestate caused by negligence in West Virginia. Ash v. Baltimore & Ohio RR. Co., Ct. App. Md., March 18, 1890.

PRIVILEGE.

Service of summons in a civil suit for breach of promise upon a defendant who has been brought from another State by requisition as a fugitive from justice, charged with the crime of seduction, and, after hearing, has been discharged from custody, but has not left the court room, is void, the defendant being entitled to a reasonable time and opportunity to return to the State whence he was taken, before he can be lawfully served with process. Moletor v. Suined, S. Ct. Wis., March 18, 1890.

JAMES C. SEllers.

THE

AMERICAN LAW REGISTER.

JULY-AUGUST, 1890.

THE LAW GOVERNING AN ORIGINAL PACKAGE.

In the December number (1889) of THE AMERICAN LAW REGISTER (volume 28, pages 733-747), the constructions put upon the Commerce Clause of the Constitution at different periods during the first Century of the existence of the Supreme Court were reviewed for the purpose of demonstrating the safety of our dual systems of government, under the various decisions which necessarily called for some particular limitation upon either the National or the State authority. The decision of the so-called Original Package Case, since the publication of that article, calls for a more extended review of the cases actually decided, and this, in their order of time, and with the simple object of setting forth the settled law especially governing the transmission of merchandise from State to State for the purpose of sale.

I.

The agencies established by the Articles of Confederation were not entitled to the dignified appellation of government: M LEAN, J. License Cases (1847), 5 How. (46 U. S.) 587.

The Articles of Confederation, which were ratified by State after State, from 1777 to March 1st, 1781, when Maryland gave her ratification, provided

409

ARTICLE II. Each State retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every power, jurisdiction and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States in Congress assembled.

The effect of this clause, and the care taken to avoid the same effect in the Constitution, were thus stated by Marshall:

But there is no phrase in the instrument [the Constitution] which, like the Articles of Confederation, excludes incidental or implied powers; and which requires that everything granted shall be expressly and minutely described. Even the Tenth Amendment, which was framed for the purpose of quicting the excessive jealousies which had been excited, omits the word "expressly," and declares only that the powers "not delegated to the United States, nor prohibited to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people ;"' thus leaving the question, whether the particular power which may become the subject of contest, has been delegated to the one government, or prohibited to the other, to depend on a fair construction of the whole instrument. The men who drew and adopted this amendment had experienced the embarrassments resulting from the insertion of this word in the Articles of Confederation, and probably omitted it to avoid those embarrassments: (McCulloch v. The State of Maryland et al., 4 Wheat. 17 U. S. 406.)

The breadth of this clause may, be understood from the sentiments of Justice BALDWIN, in his concurring opinion in the Miln case, infra.

In the Declaration of Rights in 1774, Congress expressly admitted the authority of such acts of Parliament “as were bona fide restrained to the regulation of external commerce, for the purpose of securing the commercial advantages of the whole empire to the mother country, and the commercial benefits of its respective members; excluding every idea of taxation, internal or external, for raising a revenue on the subject in America, without their consent." But in admitting this right, they asserted the free and exclusive power of "legislation in their several provincial legislatures, in all cases of taxation and internal polity, subject only to the negative of their sovereign, as has been heretofore used and accustomed." Taxation was not the only fear of the colonies, as an incident or means of regulating external commerce; it was the practical consequences of making it a pretext of assuming the power of interfering with their "internal policy," changing their "internal police,' "the regulation thereof," "of intermeddling with our provisions for the support of civil government, or the administration of justice." The States were equally afraid of intrusting their delegates in Congress with any powers which should be so extended by implication, or construction, of which the instructions of Rhode Island, in May, 1776, are a specimen: "Taking the greatest care to secure to this Colony, in the strongest and most perfect manner, its present form and all powers of government, so far as it relates to its interual police, and conduct of our own officers, civil and

religious." In consenting to a declaration of independence, the Convention of Pennsylvania added this proviso, that "the forming the government, and regulating the internal police of the colony, be always reserved to the people of the colony: (Bald. Views, 182.)

Police Power.

The question of the police power of the States cannot be fully entered into here for want of space, but it is necessary to observe what is meant by this phrase. To a mind constituted like that of Chief Justice TANEY, the police power is nothing more or less than the sovereign power: (License Cases, 5 How. 46 U. S. 583.) This seems to have been the opinion of Justice MATTHEWs in Bowman v. Chicago & N. IV. R. Co. 125 U. S. 497, 498, when he held the Iowa Statute to be void because not an exercise of jurisdiction over persons and property within the State, but without; if the railroad company and liquors offered for transportation had been wholly within the State, then they would have been the subject not merely of laws for the benefit of health and morals, but also of certain arbitrary policies looking to local benefit alone; to all of these, the police power would extend. Chief Justice FULLER quoted these sentiments with approval in the opinion of the Court in the Original Package Case, thereby confirming a political terminology already introduced; whereby sovereignty is an attribute of the nation, while the police power expresses all the authority reserved by the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution to the States respectively as distinguished from the people.

Chief Justice WAITE, in Munn v. Illinois (1877), 94 U. S. 113, 125, applied this broad definition to the State regulation of grain elevator charges, which was sustained as an exercise of constitutional authority over the conduct of one citizen towards another, in the use of private property, for the public good. And, in Stone v. Mississippi, (1879) 11 Otto (101 U. S.) 814, the Chief Justice affirmed the application of this power to the suppression of a lottery claiming protection for its charter as a contract: the protection was denied, by confining it to property, as distinguished from governmental rights, and the explanation given, that

Many attempts have been made in this Court and elsewhere, to define the police power, but never with entire success. * * * * But the power of governing is a trust, committed by the people to the government, no part of which can be granted away. The people, in their sovereign capacity, have established their agencies for the preservation of the public health and the public morals, and the protection of public and private rights. These several agencies can govern according to their discretion, if within the scope of their general authority, while in power; but they cannot give away nor sell the discretion of those that are to come after them, in respect to matters the government of which, from the very nature of things, must vary with varying circumstances:" (II Otto, 101 U. S., 818, S20.)

Justice HARLAN, in the Oleomargarine case of Powell v. Pennsylvania (1887), 127 U. S. 678, 685, sustained the State law, forbidding the manufacture of oleomargarine, on the ground that the legislative power to promote the general welfare was very great and the legislative discretion in the execution of that power was very large: and this, notwithstanding the dissenting opinion by Justice FIELD, pointed out that this particular law was really founded upon the competency of the legislature to prescribe what articles of food, out of many equally healthy, might not be sold: (Id. 689-90.) This Oleomargarine case expressly followed Mugler v. Kansas (1887), 123 U. S. 623, which in turn followed Barbier v. Connelly, of which the important sentence is quoted, at the bottom of this page.

Justice GRAY, in Wurts v. Hoagland (1884), 114 U. S. 606, thus sustained a drainage law, as a constitutional exercise of legislative power, without reference to the right of Eminent Domain or the power of suppressing a nuisance.

Justice FIELD, notwithstanding his views in the Oleomargarine and other cases (infra page 413), recognized this view in the San Francisco laundry case, when considering the effect of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States upon a local ordinance

But neither the Amendment, broad and comprehensive as it is, nor any other amendment, was designed to interfere with the power of the State, sometimes termed its "police power," to prescribe regulations to promote the health, peace, morals, education and good order of the people, and to legislate so as to increase the industries of the State, develope its resources and add to its wealth and prosperity: Barbier v. Connolly (1884), 113 U. S. 27, 31.