364 HASTINGS—POLICE POWER OF THE STATE. [June 19, 
whom were employed in the same institution of learning, as to the rela- 
tive merits of the Congregational and Presbyterian church creeds and 
church governments, which has produced such effects on business and 
legislation in this country,”’ 
was decided in 1819. In 1824, in deciding the case of Gibbons 
vs. Ogden, the chief justice comes still nearer the conception and 
the word : 
“If Congress licenses vessels to sail from one port to another in the 
same state, the act is supposed to be necessarily incidental to the power 
expressly granted to Congress, and implies no claim of a direct power to 
regulate the purely internal commerce in the state or to act directly on 
its system of police.’’? 
Again, a little farther on in that opinion that has done so much 
toward the unifying of our country he said: 
“The acknowledged power of the state to regulate its police, its domes- 
tic trade and to govern its own citizens may enable it to legislate on this 
subject to a considerable extent.’” 
Again, a little farther on, after commenting on the argument that 
the word ‘‘ regulate ’’ gave Congress an exclusive power and declin- 
ing to decide that, he adds: 
“Since, however, in exercising the power of regulating their own purely 
internal affairs whether of trading or police, the states can sometimes 
enact laws the validity of which depends upon their interfering with and 
being contrary to an act:of Congress passed in pursuance of the consti- 
tution, the court will enter upon the inquiry whether the laws of New 
York, as expounded by the highest tribunal of that state, have in their 
application in this case come into collision with an act of Congress and 
deprived a citizen of a right to which that act entitles him.’” 
He has not yet quite reached the term, but the conception is 
almost, if not quite, complete. In this case, as in the Dartmouth 
College case, the thought is suggested by the arguments of counsel 
and clarified in statement by the chief justice. 
Three years later, in 1827, in Brown vs. Maryland,* he had 
under consideration a requirement by that state, that every im- 
porter of foreign goods should, before selling them, obtain a 
license and pay for it fifty dollars. He was pressed by Taney’s 
ingenious argument, that to hold this a violation of the constitu- 
19 Wheat., 204. 3.9 Wheat., 210. 
29 Wheat., 208. 412 Wheat., 419. 
