ing liquor of any kind to State control. Senator Root said during the discussion over it:

What is proposed in this bill is that the Government of the United States shall hand over to the government of each State the right to say how and when and under what conditions interstate commerce in these articles of commerce, so treated and regarded by all the States, shall be had. (Res., p. 2931.)

Yet, in Vance v. Vandercook (170 U. S., 438-444) the court in passing on the constitutionality of the South Carolina dispensary act said that the proposition was well established

that the right to send liquors from one State into another, and the act of sending the same, is interstate commerce, the regulation whereof has been committed by the Constitution of the United States to Congress, and, hence, that a State law which denies such a right, or substantially interferes with or hampers the same, is in conflict with the Constitution of the United States.

In discussing the constitutionality of that provision in the act of 1890, which withdrew the protection of Congress from the incidental right of the importer into a State of spirituous or vinous liquors to sell the same in the original package, the court advanced as a conclusive answer to one of the contentions made against its constitutionality

that the interstate-commerce clause of the Constitution guarantees the right to ship merchandise from one State into another, and protects it until the termination of the shipment by delivery at the place of consignment, and this right is wholly unaffected by the act of Congress which allows State authority to attach to the original package before sale but only after delivery.

Said Mr. Justice White in delivering the opinion of the court:

* * *

It follows that under the Constitution of the United States every resident of South Carolina is free to receive for his own use liquor from other States, and that the inhibitions of a State statute do not operate to prevent liquors from other States from being shipped into such State, on the order of a resident for his use. To hold the law unconstitutional because it prevents such, sale in the original package would be to decide that the State law was unconstitutional because it exerted a power which the State had a lawful right to exercise. Indeed, the law of the State here under review does not purport to forbid the shipment into the State from other States of intoxicating liquors for the use of a resident, and if it did so, it would, upon principle and under the ruling in Scott v. Donald, to that extent be in conflict with the Constitution of the United States.

It is argued that the foregoing considerations are inapplicable, since the State law now before us, whilst it recognizes the right of residents of other States to ship liquor into South Carolina for the use of residents therein, attaches to the exercise of that right such restrictions as virtually destroy it.

But the right of persons in one State to ship liquor into another State to a resident for his own use is derived from the Constitution of the United States, and does not rest on the grant of the State law. Either the conditions attached by the State law unlawfully restrain the right or they do not; if they do-and we shall hereafter examine this contention-then they are void. If they do not, then there is no lawful ground of complaint on the subject.

Again, analyzing the effect of the State statute, which in substance prohibited the importation of liquor for one's own use without first obtaining a certificate from a State official, the court said:

The right of the citizen of another State to avail himself of interstate commerce can not be held to be subject to the issuing of a certificate by an officer of the State of South Carolina without admitting the power of that officer to control the exercise of the right. But the right arises from the Constitution of the United States; it exists wholly independent of the will of either the lawmaking or the executive power of the State; it takes its origin outside of the State of South Carolina and finds its support in the Constitution of the United

States. Whether or not it may be exercised depends solely upon the will of the person making the shipment and can not be in advance controlled or limited by the action of the State in any department of its government.

These foregoing decisions were applied in the case of American Express Co. v. Iowa (196 U. S., 147), where it was held that a package of intoxicating liquor received by a company in one State to be carried to a purchaser in another State, c. o. d., is interstate commerce and is under the protection of the commerce clause of the Constitution and may not be confiscated under the prohibitive liquor laws of the State.

In Pabst Brewing Co. v. Crenshaw (198 U. S., 27) it was held that a State statute which operates upon beer and malt liquors shipped from other States after their arrival and while held for sale and consumption within the State was not an interference with interstate commerce in view of the provisions of the Wilson Act of 1890. The purpose of that act, said Mr. Justice White

was to make liquor after its arrival a domestic product and to confer power upon the States to deal with it accordingly. The police power is hence to be measured by the right of a State to control or regulate domestic products, a State and not a Federal question as respects the commerce clause of the Constitution.

To decide that an exertion by a State of its power to regulate the sale of malt liquors manufactured within the State was an exercise of its police authority, and yet to say that the same, when applied to liquor shipped into the State from other States, after delivery was not an exertion of the police power, would be to destroy the Wilson Act and frustrate the very object which it was intended to accomplish, and besides would overrule the previous decisions of this court upholding and enforcing that statute.

In Heyman v. Southern Railway Co. (203 U. S., 270) it was held that the word "arrival" as used in the Wilson Act means delivery of the goods to the consignee, and not merely reaching their destination; and that the power of the State over intoxicating liquors from other States in original packages after delivery and before sale, given by the Wilson law, does not attach before notice and expiration of a reasonable time for the consignee to receive the goods from the carrier; and that this rule is not affected by the fact that under the State law the carrier's liability as such may have ceased and become that of a warehouseman.

Said Mr. Justice White:

As the general principle is that goods moving in interstate commerce cease to be such commerce only after delivery and sale in the original package, and as the settled rule is that the Wilson law was not an abdication of the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce, since that law simply affects an incident of such commerce by allowing the State power to attach after delivery and before sale, we are not concerned with whether, under the law of any particular State, the liability of a railroad company as carrier ceases and becomes that of a warehouseman on the goods reaching their ultimate destination, before notice and before the expiration of a reasonable time for the consignee to receive the goods from the carrier. For, whatever may be the divergent legal rules in the several States concerning the precise time when the liability of a carrier as such in respect to the carriage of goods ends, they can not affect the general principle as to when an interstate shipment ceases to be under the protection of the commerce clause of the Constitution, and thereby comes under the control of the State authority.

In Delamater v. South Dakota (205 U. S., 93) it was held that since the enactment of the Wilson law the owner of intoxicating liquor in one State can not, under the commerce clause of the Constitution, go

himself or send his agent into another State, and, in defiance of its laws, carry on the business of soliciting proposals for the purchase of such liquors; that although a State may not forbid a resident thereof from ordering for his own use intoxicating liquor from another State, it may forbid the carrying on within its borders of the business of soliciting orders for such liquor, although such orders may only contemplate a contract resulting from final acceptance in another State. Mr. Justice White said:

It is settled by a line of decisions of this court, noted in the margin, that the purpose of the Wilson Act, as a regulation by Congress of interstate commerce, was to allow the States. as to intoxicating liquors, when the subject of such commerce, to exert ampler power than could have been exercised before the enactment of the statute. In other words, that Congress, sedulous to prevent its exclusive right to regulate commerce from interfering with the power of the States over intoxicating liquor, by the Wilson Act adopted a special rule enabling the States to extend their authority as to such liquor shipped from other States before it became commingled with the mass of other property in the State by a sale in the original package.

Sections 238, 239, and 240 of the Penal Code forbid under penalty (1) delivery of intoxicating liquor to any person other than the consignee, unless upon his written order, or to any fictitious person; (2) the collection of the purchase price of intoxicating liquor by any common carrier, or the acting of such as agent of buyer or seller; (3) the shipment of any liquor unless labeled on the outside to show name of consignee, nature of contents, and quantity contained.

Senator Sutherland said of this legislation that it gives the Statefull power to seize and confiscate liquor after it reaches the hands of the consignee, and the sections of the penal code, by requiring delivery to an actual consignee and the plain marking of every package with the name of consignee and the quantity and kind of liquor contained, furnishes information which will enable the State to act. (Rec., 2919.)

The bill under consideration goes beyond all this. It proposes to make unlawful the transportation of liquor from one State to another where it "is intended by any person interested therein to be received, possessed, sold, or in any manner used, either in the original package or otherwise, in violation of" the law of the State, etc., into which it is shipped. If, therefore, the law of any State shall prohibit absolutely the possession or use of liquor within that State, then under this bill the mere introduction of liquor across the boundary line of the State would be conclusive evidence of an intention to violate that law, and would subject the carrier and all persons having any interest in the liquor to penalties imposed by the State law.

On the other hand, in those States where the use of liquor is permitted to any degree under restrictions, the carrier and all persons having any interest in the liquor would, from the moment of its introduction into the State, be liable to the penalties imposed by the State law if the evidence should warrant the inference that any one of them intended to use the liquor so taken into the State in any manner which should violate the State law. This, of course, would operate to give to the statutes of the State an extraterritorial operation, so as to subject persons and property without the State to the restraint of these laws by preventing them from making contracts of sale and delivery which would be lawful in the State where made, but which could not be enforced by delivery within the State of the

purchaser if such delivery were prohibited by the laws of such State. If, as was said in Rhodes v. Iowa (supra):

The right to contract for the transportation of merchandise from one State into or across another involved interstate commerce in its fundamental aspect and imparted in its very essence a relation which necessarily must be governed by laws apart from the laws of the several States, since it embraced a contract which must come under the laws of more than one State.

This fundamental right, which, as shown in the above cases, is protected by the Constitution, and subjected only to the exclusive power of regulation vested in Congress, would be entirely destroyed by this legislation. This was the principal ground upon which Senator Root based his objection to the bill. He said:

In the second place, the provision undertakes to invalidate the contracts of the people of each State by reason of the intention of some one else in regard to future conduct under the laws of other States. The laws of a given State require a common carrier to accept and carry an invoice of goods. The contract is obligatory. The contract is made. But under this provision, if it is effective at all, the contract is invalidated because some one besides the carrier, and it may be some one besides the shipper, has an undisclosed intention to violate, after the transaction of transportation is over, an unknown law in a different State. (Rec., 2930.)

What is proposed in this bill is that the Government of the United States shall hand over to the government of each State the right to say how and when and under what conditions interstate commerce in these articles of commerce, so treated and regarded by all the States, shall be had. (Rec., 2931.) Mr. Root referred to another objection, namely:

That this bill does not merely hand over to the State, which is the terminus ad quem of this transportation, the power to regulate interstate commerce within its borders, but it undertakes by Federal law to enforce in each State the laws of other States. * Let us say that the State of Iowa, which has stringent laws, is empowered by this statute, if it is passed, to declare the circumstances under which beer may be imported from the city of St. Louis, in the State of Missouri. If the beer is carried in in accordance with the laws of the State of Iowa it is a good transaction. If it is carried in in violation of those laws, with intent to sell without a license, with intent to sell in a dry" town rather than a "wet" town, with intent to sell for one purpose rather than another, then it is a bad transaction and the contract made in Missouri is a void contract, made void by the law of Iowa. (Rec., 2931.)

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It was said in the Bowman case (125 U. S., 465, 480) that—

The rule has been asserted with great clearness that whenever the subjects over which a power to regulate commerce is asserted are in their nature national, or admit of one uniform system or plan of regulation, they may justly be said to be of such a nature as to require exclusive legislation by Congress.

*

Surely transportation of passengers or merchandise through a State, or from one State to another, is of this nature. It is of national importance that over that subject there should be but one regulating power, for if one State can directly tax persons or property passing through it, or tax them indirectly by levying a tax upon their transportation, every other may, and thus commercial intercourse between States remote from each other may be destroyed. It was to guard against the possibility of such commercial embarrassments, no doubt, that the power of regulating commerce among States was conferred upon the Federal Government.

*

*

The court quoted from the case of Cooley v. Port Wardens (12 How., 299) the following language:

The subjects, indeed, upon which Congress can act under this power [over interstate commerce] are of infinite variety, requiring for their successful management different plans or modes of treatment. Some of them are national in their character, and admit and require uniformity of regulation, affecting alike

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all the States; others are local, or are mere aids to commerce, and can only be properly regulated by provisions adapted to their special circumstances and localities. Of the former class may be mentioned all that portion of commerce with foreign countries or between the States which consists in the transportation, purchase, sale, and exchange of commodities. Here there can of necessity be only one system or plan of regulation, and that Congress alone can prescribe. * And it is a matter of public history that the object of vesting in Congress the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the States was to insure uniformity of regulation against conflicting and discriminating State legislation.

Again:

Commerce with foreign countries and among the States, strictly considered, consists in intercourse and traffic, including in these terms navigation and the transportation and transit of persons and property, as well as the purchase, sale, and exchange of commodities. For the regulation of commerce as thus defined, there can be only one system of rules, applicable alike to the whole country; and the authority which can act for the whole country can alone adopt such a system. Action upon it by separate States is not, therefore, permissible. (Citing 12 How., 702.)

In summing up a review of the authorities on the subject of the limits of State legislation which would intrench upon commerce among the States, Mr. Justice Matthews said:

In a word, it may be said that in the matter of interstate commerce the United States are but one country, and are and must be subject to one system of regulations and not to a multitude of systems.

This doctrine was asserted with emphasis in Leisy v. Hardin (135 U. S., 119). It is also declared in Mobile v. Kimball (102 U. S., 691, 697) and Hall v. Decuir (95 U. S., 485, 507).

But it is contended that the bill would in the exercise of the undoubted powers of Congress merely declare spirituous, vinous, malted, fermented, or other intoxicating liquors of any kind to be in effect "outlaws of commerce," and subject that class of merchandise to the exercise of the police powers of the several States.

Said the court in the Bowman case:

Doubtless the States have power to provide by law suitable measures to prevent the introduction into the States of articles of trade which, on account of their existing condition, would bring in and spread disease, pestilence, and death, such as rags or other substances infected with the germs of yellow fever or the virus of smallpox, or cattle, or meat, or other provisions that are diseased or decayed, or otherwise, from their condition and quality, unfit for human use or consumption. Such articles are not merchantable; they are no legitimate subjects of trade and commerce. They may be rightly outlawed as intrinsically and directly the immediate sources and causes of destruction to human health and life. The self-protecting power of each State, therefore, may be rightfully exerted against their introduction, and such exercises of power can not be considered regulations of commerce prohibited by the Constitution.

Reference was made to the observation of Justice Catron in the License cases, that if from the nature of the article it did not belong to commerce or of its condition from putrescence or other cause is such when it is about to enter a State that it no longer belongs to commerce, or, in other words, is not a merchantable article, then the State power may exclude its introduction; and it is said that by this legislation Congress has in effect declared that liquors do not belong to commerce, are not commercial articles, and has left it to the State to effectually exclude their introduction into the State.