1900.] HASTINGS—POLICE POWER OF THE STATE. 385 
with their social and internal condition; a state regulates its domestic 
commerce, contracts, the transmission of estate, real and personal, 
and acts upon all internal matters which relate to its moral and political 
welfare. 
“Over these subjects the federal government has no power. They 
appertain to the state sovereignty as exclusively as powers exclusively 
delegated appertain to the general government.” , ... ‘‘ A license to 
sell an article, foreign or domestic, as a merchant, an innkeeper or a 
victualer, is a matter of police and of revenue within the power of a 
state.” . .. . “The acknowledged police power of a state extends often 
to the destruction of property. A nuisance may be abated, everything 
prejudicial to the health or morals of a city may be removed. Mer- 
chandise from a port where a contagious disease prevails, being liable to 
communicate the disease, may be excluded. In extreme cases it may 
be thrown into the sea. This comes into direct conflict with the regula- 
tion of commerce, and yet no one doubts the power. It is a power essen- 
tial to self-preservation, and exists necessarily in every organized com- 
munity. It is indeed the law of nature and possessed by man in his 
individual capacity.” 
Judge Taney’s old gunpowder argument and _ illustration in 
Brown vs. Maryland come back again. After concluding that the 
case in hand is not one of sale by the importer, and therefore the 
precedent in Brown vs. Maryland did not apply, he answers the 
argument that a power such as he has described might be used to 
interfere with foreign and interstate commerce merely by saying 
that the fact that a power may be abused furnishes no inference of 
its non-existence. What power may not be abused in human 
hands ? 
Coming back again to the relations of the police power to that 
of Congress, he says that they must stand together: 
‘Neither of them can be so exercised as to materially affect the other. 
The sources and objects of these powers are exclusive, distinct and inde- 
pendent, and are essential to both governments. The one operates 
upon foreign commerce and the other upon the internal concerns of a 
state; the former ceases when the foreign product becomes commingled 
with the other property in the state. At this point the local law attaches 
and regulates it as it does other property. The state cannot, with a view 
to encourage its local manufactures, prohibit the use of foreign articles, 
or impose such a regulation as shall be in effect a prohibition. But it 
may tax such, as it taxes other and similar articles in the state, 
either specifically or in the form of a license to sell. A license may 
be required to seil foreign articles when those of a domestic 
