OLEOMARGARINE. 393 



all duties and imposts laid by any State on exports or imports shall be 

 for the use of the Treasury of the United States, and all such laws 

 shall be subject to the revision and control of Congress. That is a 

 provision of the eighth article of the Constitution of the United 

 States. 



So that it would uselessly consume your time and waste words to add 

 to the statement that a State has no power of taxation upon any arti- 

 cle of interstate commerce, except such as is involved in an inspection, 

 and the net proceeds of all taxes laid for such purposes belong to the 

 United States. 



The section can not be defended upon that ground, nor can it be 

 defended upon the ground that it involves a delegation by Congress to 

 the States of any portion of the police power, for a double reason. In 

 the first place, if Congress has the police power, it can not delegate it, 

 and, in the second place, it has no police power as respects the States. 



Senator ALLEN. Let me ask you a question there. 



Mr. DAVIS. Yes, sir. 



Senator ALLEN. Did not the Supreme Court in the Iowa liquor cases 

 hold that Congress could delegate the power? 



Mr. DAVIS. I am coming to that, Senator. I have that in mind and 

 I want to point out what seems to have been overlooked in all this dis- 

 cussion as to that very question. I say, in the first place, Congress 

 can not delegate any power, and in those cases to which you refer, and 

 which I will come to presently, the court vindicates its conclusions by 

 a distinct declaration that the act of Congress does not involve such a 

 delegation, as I will show you. 



This first reason that is, that Congress can not delegate the police 

 power, assuming it to have it is aptly illustrated by the cases cited by 

 Mr. Justice Shiras iij his dissenting opinion, concurred in by Chief 

 Justice Fuller and Justice McKenna, in the case of Vance v. W. A. 

 Vandercook Company, No. 1, in 170 U. S., 438, and notably in the case 

 of Stoutenburgh v. Henning, which is in 129 U. S., 141. 



That case came up from the District of Columbia and involved this 

 proposition. The Constitution of the United States, in this same eighth 

 article, gives Congress exclusive jurisdiction over such territory as 

 should be selected for the seat of government, that is to say, the Dis- 

 trict of Columbia, and Congress enacted a law creating a Territorial 

 form of government, providing for a legislature and giving the legisla 

 ture general legislative powers. The Supreme Court said that a certain 

 law of the local legislature, although it was within the grant of Con- 

 gress, according to the language of the act of Congress, was void, 

 because Congress had undertaken to delegate something that the Con- 

 stitution committed to itself, and that therefore this local legislation, 

 although within the line of the grant of Congress, was unconstitutional 

 and void. 



Now, in this very same opinion, this dissenting opinion to which first 

 I want to call attention that is, the dissenting opinion of Justice Shiras 

 in Vance v. The W A. Vandercook Company Justice Shiras con- 

 vincingly maintains that Congress can not delegate to a State any of 

 its powers over interstate commerce and points out and this comes to 

 your question, Senator Allen what is as yet unanswered, that in none 

 of the preceding cases decided by the Supreme Court was this question 

 necessary to be decided, or, in fact, decided, for the reason that intoxi- 

 cating liquors, from their very nature, were conceded to threaten the 

 public safety, the public morals, and the public health, to which mat- 

 ters the police power extends, and that as to such articles the right of 

 self protection in the States was obvious and proper to be preserved. 



