372 HASTINGS—POLICE POWER OF THE STATE. _ [June19, 
word in stump speeches, newspaper articles and street-corner dis- 
cussions. If a subject is not simple, treat it nevertheless as if it 
were and trim it into simple phrase, is the rule of the newspaper 
and the hustings. ‘There was no candidate among all the phrases 
that discussions had to that time developed that could compare 
with Marshall’s ‘‘ police power ’’ as a brief formula for the expres- 
sion of the federalist idea of the state’s functions in the federal 
system. So into the current discussion it went. 
The glibness with which politicians were now soon talking about 
the Police Power, and citing the case of the City of New York zs. 
Miln, is shown by House Report No. 80, third session of the 
Twenty-seventh Congress. An examination of this report and 
the documents accompanying it, and the comparison of these with 
antecedent state papers and writings upon similar subjects, would 
seem sufficiently to indicate the genesis of the term. ‘The resolu- 
tions offered by Mr. Winthrop in connection with the report show 
how completely the term had gotten into legal and popular use by 
1843, and also its relation to the burning political questions then 
already preparing the country for civil war. 
They are, First, That the arrest and imprisonment of colored sea- 
men from other states without charge except that of entering a 
port of the United States on lawful business is a violation of article 
4, section 2, of the constitution of the United States. Second, 
The seizure of such seamen from foreign vessels entering our ports 
is a breach of comity and of treaty rights, and a violation of article 
6 of the constitution of the United States. Third, Laws forbid- 
ding seamen of other states or countries from entering ports on 
lawful business are a violation of the exclusive power of the gen- 
eral government to regulate commerce. Fourth, 
‘Police Powers of states can justify no enactment or regulations in 
direct, positive and permanent conflict with express provisions or funda- 
mental principles of the National Compact.” 
These resolutions show the currency of the phrase. Mr. Rayner, 
in his minority report, no less than Mr. Winthrop for the majority 
of the committee, makes the same use of the terms, and the report 
sufficiently shows that the source is the case of Mayor of New 
York vs. Miln, just as that case in turn shows that it derives them 
from Judge Marshall’s opinion in Brown vs. Maryland. These 
resolutions were, on March 2, 1843, tabled in the House of Repre- 
