measures to promote its growth and insure its safety. And as commerce embraces navigation, the improvement of harbors and bays along our coast, and of navigable rivers within the States connecting with them, falls within the power. The subjects, indeed, upon which Congress can act under this power 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 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. Its non-action in such cases with respect to any particular commodity or mode of transportation, is a declaration of its purpose that the commerce in that commodity or by that means of transportation shall be free. There would otherwise be no security against conflicting regulations of different States, each discriminating in favor of its own products and citizens, and against the products and citizens of other States. 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.

"Of the class of subjects local in their nature, or intended as mere aids to commerce, which are best provided for by special regulations, may be mentioned harbor pilotage, buoys, and beacons to guide mariners to the proper channel in which to direct their vessels.

"The improvement of harbors, bays, and navigable rivers within the States falls within this last category of cases. The control of Congress over them is to insure freedom in their navigation, so far as that is essential to the exercise of

HARBORS AND RIVERS.

461

its commercial power. Such freedom is not encroached upon by the removal of obstructions to their navigability or by other legitimate improvement. The States have as full control over their purely internal commerce as Congress has over commerce among the several States and with foreign nations; and to promote the growth of that internal commerce and insure its safety they have an undoubted right to remove obstructions from their harbors and rivers, deepen their channels, and improve them generally, if they do not impair their free navigation as permitted under the laws of the United States, or defeat any system for the improvement of their navigation provided by the General Government. Legislation for the purposes and within the limits mentioned does not infringe upon the commercial power of Congress, and so we hold that the act of the State of Alabama of Feb. 16, 1867, to provide for the improvement of the river, bay, and harbor of Mobile, is not invalid."1

It has been decided on like grounds that Massachusetts may well enact that lumber driven or floated down the Connecticut River shall be formed into rafts and be in the charge of some competent person while passing through her borders, although the Connecticut flows through several States, and the lumber in question comes from Vermont, and is on its way to the sea.2

The right to impose such duties as are absolutely necessary for their inspection-laws is reserved to the States by the Constitution, and a State may consequently provide that her products shall be examined as to quantity, quality, and weight before exportation, to insure excellence, or as a guaranty against fraud; but the authority thus conferred does not include passengers, or warrant an enactment that they shall be inspected before landing, and a fee paid to the officer by whom the duty is performed.1

Although corporations are artificial persons and not within

1 The County of Mobile v. Kimball, 102 U. S. 696.

2 Harrigan v. The Connecticut River Lumber Co., 129 Mass. 589. Turner v. Maryland, 107 U. S. 38; Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheaton, 1. The People v. Compagnie Générale, 107 U. S. 59.

the clause "that the citizens of each State shall enjoy the rights, privileges, and immunities of the citizens of the several States," and a State may prescribe the terms on which companies chartered by other States shall transact business within her limits, it cannot debar them from entering into contracts for the prosecution of the interstate or foreign commerce which is equally entitled to protection and beyond State control, whether it is carried on by individuals or bodies corporate.2

1 Paul v. Virginia, 8 Wallace, 168; ante, p. 276, post, p. 476.

2 Cooper Manuf. Co. v. Ferguson, 113 U. S. 727; Ferry Co. v. Pennsylvania, 114 U. S. 196.

LECTURE XXII.

Regulation of Commerce (continued). Relation of State Taxation to the Regulation of Commerce. - State Police Power. - Products of other States. Immigration. Interstate Commerce. States may not so regulate Internal as to affect interstate Transportation of Freight or Passengers. Short and Long Haul. Policies of Insurance. — Bills of Exchange. Bills of Lading. - Corporations chartered by other States.

TAXATION and the power to regulate commerce are so far coincident that both operate on the same things, and may tend to one result. Commerce may obviously be regulated through a tax, or a tax incidentally affect commerce; as where duties are laid on foreign or colonial ships or products with a view to favoring domestic trade or navigation. Such was the selfish course which led to the Declaration of Independence, but which England has now exchanged for the wise and liberal rule which holds Canada, Australia, and New Zealand without the aid of force. The power to tax and the power over commerce are nevertheless diverse, and may be lodged in different branches of the same government, or even in distinct governments ruling the same territory, without being necessarily repugnant or inconsistent. The subject was the theme of earnest debate during the controversy which preceded the American Revolution. The Colonists conceded that the mother-country might levy such duties as were appropriate to the regulation of commerce, but declared that taxation was inseparable from representation, and that a people who sent no delegates to Parliament were entitled to tax themselves. The distinction was declared by Chatham to be inherent in the nature of things, and one which every nation that cared for freedom should religiously observe. Property was private, individual, absolute; trade, a vast and

complicated machine, reaching as far as ships could sail or waters flow. To regulate its several parts and movements, and combine them for the good of the whole, required the superintending wisdom and energy of the supreme power in the empire.

But this supreme power stood in no such relation towards the internal taxation which bore directly on property; there was no warrant in the Constitution for a supreme power operative on property. Let the distinction then remain forever ascertained, the right of taxation was in the Colonies; Parliament must regulate commerce.1

The distinction drawn by Chatham with so much clearness is applicable at the present day, and shows that there is no necessary conflict between the power of the General Government to regulate commerce, and the power of the States to tax the railroads, canals, ships, locomotives, and ferry-boats which are the instruments of commerce, or the goods and wares in which the merchant deals.2

In the Head-money Cases 3 the court held, on grounds analogous to those taken by Chatham, that an impost which might be unconstitutional if considered simply as such, from want of uniformity or other cause, may yet be valid as a regulation of commerce. The point arose on an act imposing a duty "of fifty cents for each and every passenger, not a citizen of the United States, who shall come by steam or sail vessel from a foreign port to any point in the United States; and it was decided that the transportation of passengers from abroad is a part of our commerce with foreign nations, and laws regulating it are within the commercial power of Congress. It is because such laws directly affect commerce that they cannot be made by the States, and it follows that they may well be enacted by the General Government.

Chatham's Speech in the House of Lords, January, 1775; Thackeray's Life of Chatham, ii. 281.

2 Wiggins Ferry Co. v. East St. Louis, 107 U. S. 365; Memphis & Little Rock Co. v. Nolan, 14 Fed. Rep. 532; House v. Glover, 15 Id. 292; Marshalltown v. Blum, 58 Iowa, 184; In re Watson, 15 Fed. Rep. 511; State v. The Pullman Car Co., 16 Fed. Rep. 193.

112 U. S. 580.