370 BURR— THE TREATY-MAKING POWER [Apiiiao, 



should not be inferred from the silence of Congress upon the subject- 

 any intention that commerce should be free from the operation of 

 laws passed by a State in the exercise of its police powers. Con- 

 sequently, until Congress acted, the State statute was valid. Said 

 Mr. Justice Gray : 



" The protection of the safety, the health, the morals, the good order and 

 the general welfare of the people is the chief end of government. Salus 

 popidi suprcma lex. The police power is inherent in the States, reserved to 

 them by the Constitution, and necessary to their existence as organized gov- 

 ernments. The Constitution of the United States and the laws made in 

 pursuance thereof being the supreme law of the land, all statutes of a State 

 must, of course, give way, so far as they are repugnant to the national 

 Constitution and laws. But an intention is not lightly to be imputed to the 

 framers of the Constitution, or to the Congress of the United States, to 

 subordinate the protection of the safety, health and morals of the people to 

 the promotion of trade and commerce."^- 



We have thus the unanimous acquiescence by the Co.trt in the doc- 

 trine that whenever a conflict occurs between constitutional acts of 

 the United States and State police powers operating upon the same 

 subject, the State police power must yield. In other words, the police 

 power of the States is subject to treaty provision and constitutional 

 act of Congress.-'^ And if one choose, this being true, to apply no 

 longer the term police power to the source of the State's activity, 

 the difference is one of words only. The thought of Mr. Justice 

 Gray was the same which Mr. Chief Justice Taney had expressed 

 in the License Cases. 



"What are the police powers of a State?" asked Mr. Chief Justice 

 Taney. He answered : " They are nothing more or less than the powers of 

 government inherent in every sovereignty to the extent of its dominions. 

 And whether a State passes a quarantine law, or a law to punish offenses, or 

 to establish Courts of Justice, or requiring certain instruments to be recorded, 

 or to regulate commerce within its own limits, in every case it exercises the 

 same powers ; that is to say, the power of sovereignty, the power to govern 

 men and things within the limits of its dominion. It is by virtue of this 

 power that it legislates ; and its authority to make regulations of commerce 

 is as absolute as its power to pass health laws, except in so far as it has been 

 restricted by the Constitution of the United States. And when the validity 

 of a State law making regulations of commerce is drawn into question in a 



^^'Ibid., pp. 132, 158. 

 -" See note 14. 



