(Se) 
82 HASTINGS—POLICE POWER OF THE STATE. [June 19, 
Then he asks: 
‘What are the police powers of a state? They are nothing more or 
less than the powers of government inherent in every sovereignty to the 
extent of its dominion, and whether a state passes a quarantine law or a 
law to punish offenses, or to establish courts of justice, or requiring 
certain instruments to be recorded, or to regulate commerce within its 
own limits, in every case it exercises the same power: that is to say, this. 
power of sovereignty, the power to govern men and things within the 
limits of its own dominions. It is by virtue of this power that it legis- 
lates, and its authority to make regulations of commerce is as absolute 
as its power to pass health laws, excepting so far as it has been restricted 
by the constitution of the United States. When the validity of a state 
law is drawn in question in a judicial tribunal, the authority to pass it 
cannot be made to depend upon the motives that may be supposed to 
have influenced the legislature, nor can the court inquire whether it was 
intended to guard the citizens of a state from pestilence and disease or 
to make regulations of commerce for the interests and convenience of 
trade.” 
He cites a number of other matters in which the states legislate 
notwithstanding Congress has authority, as in matters relating to 
the militia, the bridging of navigable streams, as illustrated in 
2 Houston vs. Moore and * Wilson vs. Blackbird Creek Marsh Com- 
pany. He holds the New Hampshire law and judgment valid, 
though the gin sold was brought from another state in the same 
barrel and Congress had undoubted power to regulate such traffic. 
Congress, however, had not done so, and therefore he thought the 
state, in the exercise of its general governmental powers, might 
deal with it as it pleased and either license or prohibit altogether 
such sales. 
Judge McLean is, even more thoroughly than the chief justice, 
of the opinion that the laws and judgments in question are valid. 
He does not, however, like him, admit there is any neutral or 
common ground between the powers of the state and those of the 
federal government; each, to his mind, is absolutely supreme in its 
own sphere. So he thinks there can be no question that these are 
public laws, and therefore are not regulations of commerce. 
4«« The states resting on their original basis of sovereignty, subject only 
to the exceptions stated, exercise their powers over everything connected 
1 § How., 583. 32 Pet ean. 
25 Wheat., i. 45 How., 588. 
