1900.] HASTINGS—POLICE POWER OF THE STATE. Sit 
At the time of the rendition of these two judgments, City of 
New York against Miln and the Charles River Bridge vs. Warren 
Bridge, the question of the relations of the states to the federal 
government had become a burning one. ‘The nullification contro- 
versy had come and gone, or rather had been compromised. This 
had scarcely dealt directly with the powers reserved to the states. . 
It had rather concerned itself with the question of what the 
national government might do in executing its own admitted func- 
tions. As a result of it, however, the states were pushed forward 
by Calhoun and his supporters. The discussion showed that open 
defiance of the federal government would not be supported, at 
least with Andrew Jackson at the head of that government and 
with Webster in the Senate to explain its constitution ; but behind 
nullification was the slavery controversy. 
In 1831 Garrison had established his Zzderator, and had gotten 
into jail because of it. He had become, in the eyes of many, a 
martyr for liberty. The slave rising at South Hampton, with the 
slaughter of some sixty white people, had taken place shortly after- 
ward. Then Calhoun had precipitated his famous slavery debate 
and begun to preach his cult of state sovereignty. The irritating 
controversy over the South Carolina exclusion laws had been go- 
ing on for some years. Marshall then died. By the act of March 
3, 1837, just as these decisions were published, three new judges 
had been added to the number constituting the Supreme Court, 
with the design, as many thought, of overruling his federalist 
judgments. Public attention was, therefore, at once called to this 
case of the City of New York vs. Miln, and to the sustaining of 
the power of the state to enact the restrictions against shipmasters 
and ship-owners, brought by this case to the consideration of the 
court, and to the terms of the decision. President Jackson, in his 
annual message to Congress in 1835, had made his famous recom- 
mendation that abolition literature be excluded by act of Congress 
from the mails, and Calhoun and the Senate had reported that 
Congress had no authority to do so. 
The pungent phrase of Judge Marshall was adapted for a catch 
word. The very indefiniteness of the conception under it com- 
pelled a definite word in popular discussion. The vast and vague 
notion of the powers of the state, rendered still more so by taking 
from it the still more vague conception of the national government 
and its powers, manifestly never would do to make a popular catch 
