1900. ] HASTINGS—POLICE POWER OF THE STATE. 365 
tional prohibition against the state’s taxing imports, and also of 
the clause giving Congress the regulation of foreign commerce, 
would cripple the state at once in both its power of taxation and its 
power to protect itself against dangerous importations, such as 
gunpowder ; and the states would be powerless to prescribe proper 
regulations for the handling of such articles in the protection of 
their citizens. Taney’s claim was, that the force of the constitu- 
tional provision must cease when the goods were landed and placed 
in store, or the state lose all control of traffic that might be in the 
last degree dangerous and state and citizens alike be deprived of 
the right of self-preservation. 
The chief justice denied the consequence, but not the right of 
the state, in holding the act of the state repugnant both to the 
constitutional provision against a state tax on imports and to 
various acts of Congress establishing duties on imports. He 
referred to the-example brought by his future successor in these 
terms : 
“The power to direct removal of gunpowder is a branch of the police 
power which unquestionably remains and ought to remain with the 
states.” 
This seems to be the advent of the phrase into legal discussions in 
this country. An examination of various writings where it would 
naturally occur, if already in use, does not find it. It is noticeably 
absent from the opinion of Attorney-General Wirt? as to the 
constitutionality of the South Carolina laws excluding free colored 
seamen from her port. This opinion was given in 1824, three 
years before the decision of Brown vs. Maryland, and the phrases 
of Gibbon vs. Ogden concerning the powers of the state are the 
ones reproduced in it. 
The case of Brown vs. Maryland did not suffice to put the phrase 
‘* Police Power’’ into immediate currency. The opinion of 
Attorney-General Berrien given in 1831,? in contradiction to that 
of Mr. Wirt, also contains no use of these terms. The phrase 
would inevitably occur ig any similar discussion within the last 
fifty years, but both of these eminent lawyers use the terms ‘ right 
to maintain its own police regulations,’’ ‘‘ established regulations 
of police’’ and similar phrases such as Blackstone and Kent both 
1 Ho, Rep., No. 80, 3 Sess. 27th Cong. 
2 Ho. Rep., No, 80, supra, 
