APPENDIX. 69 



"The foregoing analysis of the principles upon which alone rests 

 the right of an individual to acquire a qualified ownership in game, 

 and the power of the State, deduced therefrom, to control such 

 ownership for the common benefit, clearly demonstrates the validity 

 of the statute of the State of Comiecticut here in controversy. The 

 sole consequence of the provision forbidding the transportation of 

 game, killed within the State, beyond the State, is to confine the use . 

 of such game to those who own it, the people of that State. The prop- 

 osition that the State may not forbid carrying it beyond her limits 

 involves, therefore, the contention that a State cannot allow its own 

 people the enjoyment of the benefit of the property belonging to 

 them in common, without at the same time permitting the citizens 

 of other States to participate in that which they do not own. It was 

 said in the discussion at the bar, although it be conceded that the 

 State has an absolute right to control and regulate the killing of game 

 as its judgment deems best in the interests of the people, inasmuch 

 as the State has here chosen to allow the people within her borders 

 to take game, to dispose of it, and thus cause it to become an object 

 of State commerce, as a resulting necessity such property has become 

 the subject of interstate commerce, and is hence controlled by the 

 provisions of article 1, section 8 of the Constitution of the United 

 States. But the errors which this argument involves are manifest. 

 It presupposes that where the killing of game and its sale Avithin the 

 State is allowed, that it thereby becomes commerce in the legal 

 meaning of that word. In view of the authority of a State to affix 

 conditions to the killing and sale of game, predicated as is this power 

 on the peculiar nature of such property and its common ownership 

 by all the citizens of the State, it may be well doubted whether 

 commerce is created by an authority given by a State to reduce game 

 within its borders to possession, provided such game be not taken, 

 when killed, without the jurisdiction of the State. The common 

 ownership imports the right to keep the property, if the sovereign 

 so chooses, always within its jurisdiction for every purpose. The 

 qualification which forbids its removal from the State necessarily 



