1900. ] HASTINGS—POLICE POWER OF THE STATE, 391 
money so received, and if this was more than sufficient for the 
necessary maintenance of the marine hospital, including their own 
salaries and certain payments to the city, they were to pay the sur- 
plus to the treasurer of the Society for the Reformation of Juvenile 
Delinquents. 
Suit was brought to recover this penalty and for the required 
payment against the master of the English ship Henry Bliss for 
landing two hundred and ninety passengers. Judgment was ren- 
dered against him in the trial court, and also on appeal in the state 
court of last resort, and the case then taken to the Supreme Court 
of the United States. 
In 1837 it had been enacted by the legislature of the state of 
Massachusetts that each vessel coming into harbor at Boston be 
boarded by officers appointed by the city authorities and no lunatic, 
idiot, maimed, aged or infirm person, incompetent, in such board- 
ing officers’ opinion, to earn a livelihood, and no person who had 
been a pauper in any other country found on such vessel be per- 
mitted to land, unless bond in the sum of one thousand dollars 
should be given that such person would not become a public charge 
within ten years; and that no passenger be permitted to land from 
such vessel till two dollars for each passenger so landing had been 
paid to such boarding officer. 
A Nova Scotia schooner called Zhe Union Jack had landed nine- 
teen passengers at Boston. Her master had paid the fee under 
protest and brought an action to recover it back, and from judg- 
ment against him in the state courts had taken the case by error to 
the United States Supreme Court. 
The court, in an opinion by Justice McLean, with whom con- 
curred Justices Wayne, Catron, McKinley and Grier, decided the 
laws both bad as being infringements upon the power of Congress 
to regulate foreign and interstate commerce. 
He considers the question under two general heads: first, Is the 
power of Congress to regulate commerce exclusive ? and, second, 
Is the statute of the state of New York, and subsequently the 
Massachusetts statute, a regulation of commerce? In discussing 
the first, he has discovered that the doctrine that the legislative 
power of the state can be in any case subordinate 
1 = ° . ‘ 
“degrades the states by making their legislation to the extent stated 
17 Howard, 399. 
PROC. AMER. PHILOS. SOC. XXXIx. 163. Zz. PRINTED SEPT. 26, 1900 
