I9I2.] OF THE UNITED STATES. 371 



judicial tribunal, the authority to pass it cannot be made to depend upon the 

 motives that may be supposed to have influenced the legislature, nor can the 

 Court inquire whether it was intended to guard the citizens of the State from 

 pestilence and disease, or to make regulations of commerce for the interests 

 and convenience of trade. 



"Upon this question the object and motive of the State are of no im- 

 portance, and cannot influence the decision. It is a question of power."^* 



]\Ir. Chief Justice Taney concluded in these License Cases that Con- 

 gress had passed no law upon the subject, that the federal govern- 

 ment had entered into no treaties, that in their absence and only in 

 their absence the statutes were valid. 



Certain of the judges in these License Cases, however, gave voice 

 to opinions on the supremacy of the police power which we have 

 already quoted. 



"When in the appropriate exercise," said Mr. Justice McLean, "of these 

 Federal and State powers, contingently and incidentally their lines of action 

 run into each other; if the State power be necessary to the preservation of the 

 morals, the health, or safety of the community, it must be maintained.""" 



Without grave qualification of his language, Mr. Justice McLean, 

 as is seen in Leisy vs. Hardin, was wrong. The language of Mr. 

 Justice Daniel is in itself unexceptional. ^^^ If he meant more than 

 his words necessarily imply, and intended to convey the idea that 

 treaty provisions and acts of Congress were arbitrary and void if 

 they operated upon the police powers of the State, he was out of 

 sympathy with the subsequent development of constitutional law, as 

 illustrated in Leisy vs. Hardin, and his opinion has only an his- 

 torical interest for us here. The lack of really authoritative force 

 in his words may be gathered from this additional quotation from 

 his opinion : 



" The doctrines which to me appear to have been gratuitously brought 

 into this case are those which have been promulgated in the reasoning of this 

 Court in the case of Brown vs. The State of Maryland, — doctrines (and I 

 speak it with all due respect) which I conceive cannot, by correct induction, 

 be derived from the Constitution, nor even from the grounds assumed for 

 their foundation in the reasoning of the Court in that case; but which, on 

 the contrary, appear to be wholly illogical and arbitrary."""' 



"*5 How., p. 582. ■'"'Supra, p. 170. 



-'"Ibid., p. 592. -"5 How., p. 611. 



