388 HASTINGS—POLICE POWER OF THE STATE. _ [June 19, 
and navigation, as the author of the doctrine of such exclusive 
power on the part of Congress is, as Taney remarks, 
“To make different parts of that opinion (Gibbon vs. Ogden) incon- 
sistent with each other, an error which I am quite sure no one will ever 
impute to the eminent jurist by whom the opinion was delivered.” 
A lifetime of struggle with Marshall’s logic had made Taney, at 
least, as able to get his meaning where his conclusions were 
accepted and sympathized with as was Story. Taney’s derivation 
of: consequences would be the closer of the two. That he regarded 
himself as strictly following Marshall’s lead given in Wilson ws. 
Blackbird Creek Marsh Company, and the latter as in no degree 
inconsistent with, but on the contrary derivable from the doctrine 
of Gibbon vs. Ogden and Brown vs. Maryland, is clear. That 
Marshall should, after recognizing so clearly in his opinion in 
Gibbon vs. Ogden the exclusive right of the state to regulate 
its ‘‘internal police,’’ have shown as he ‘did that he considered 
the validity of much legislation which had been enacted by the 
states to depend upon its conformity to that of Congress, would 
seem to establish that at that time, as well as in 1829 when he 
decided the case of Wilson vs. Blackbird Creek Marsh Company, 
he recognized such a subordinate power in the states. With 
Taney, many will prefer to doubt the posthumous assertion of his 
adherence to the doctrine of exclusive power in Congress, rather 
than question his consistency. 
This view will commend itself the more because Taney’s doc- 
trine was anything but separatist in practical tendency, and offered 
far greater opening, in fact, for the adjustment of differences 
between the states and the federal government than did the other. 
If the only authority on the part of states to legislate comes from 
a sovereign police power, ‘‘complete, unqualified and absolute,’’ 
every enactment must be an assertion of such power and every 
inconsistency with federal legislation a clash of sovereigns. Then, 
too, if they were, as Story, McLean and Grier insisted, wholly sep- 
arate fields, one belonging to the federal and the other to the state 
governments, the one fenced off to its owner by the constitutional 
grant of power to regulate commerce, and the other to the states 
by the constitutional reservation of all powers not conferred, 
neither Congress on the one hand nor the state legislatures or con- 
1See p. 364. 
