1900.] HASTINGS—POLICE POWER OF THE STATE. 441 
' Slaughter-house cases marks as important a turn in the constitu- 
tional history of our country as any ever rendered in that court. 
In 1869 the legislature of the state of Louisiana chartered the 
Crescent City Live Stock Landing and Slaughter-house Company, 
and gave it the exclusive right for twenty-five years of keeping and 
maintaining in three parishes of that state, embracing 1134 square 
miles and including the city of New Orleans, landings and yards 
for live stock, intended for sale or slaughter, and of keeping slaughter- 
houses for such stock ; and forbade all other persons from maintain- 
ing such places in the three parishes. The act prescribed the terms 
on which the public should have the use of such appliances, and 
that they must be adequate, and fixed the locality in which they 
must be placed. Here wasa considerable area and a large population 
affected, and about a thousand men, previously engaged in supply- 
ing this population with meat, whose independent business was 
destroyed. 
The state courts upheld the law. The United States Circuit 
Court for Louisiana held it a violation of the provisions of the 
fourteenth amendment, and numerous cases came into the federal 
Supreme Court by proceedings in error from the state court and by 
appeals from the United States Circuit Court. All were finally 
settled except three. These were argued in January, 1872, in the 
absence of Justice Nelson. ‘The eight other justices apparently di- 
vided equally as to the cases. At the next term, Justice Nelson 
having retired and Justice Hunt having taken his place, they were 
again elaborately argued. Mr. Campbell, who had abandoned the 
position of judge in this very court to take service on the southern 
side, appeared now to contest the power of his own state to enact 
such a law. April 14, 1873, Judge Miller rendered the decision in 
an opinion which, by a bare majority of one, was that of the 
court. The dissenters were Chief Justice Chase and Justices 
- Field, Bradley and Swayne. 
*- Judge Miller holds that the providing where and how and by 
whom such places shall be maintained is a proper exercise of the 
police power of a state, citing especially Gibbons vs. Ogden, New 
York City vs. Miln, and the later cases of the United ?States ws. 
DeWitt, in 1869, and the * License Tax cases in 1866: the former 
being a holding that the Congress of the United States has no 
general power of police regulation within the state, and holding 
1716 Wall, 18. 29 Wall, 41. 35 Wall, 462. 
