446 HASTINGS—-POLICE POWER OF THE STATE. [June 19, 
In this connection Judge Miller makes his often-quoted prophecy 
so thoroughly falsified in recent years: 
1 “ We doubt very much whether any action of a state not directed by way ” 
of discrimination against the negro as a class or on account of their race 
will ever be held to come within the purview of this provision. It is so 
clearly a provision for that race and that emergency that a strong case 
will be necessary for its application to any other.” 
He does not, however, entirely commit himself to its total inappli- 
cability to any other : 
‘‘ As it is a state that is to be dealt with and not alone the validity of its 
laws, we may safely leave that matter until Congress shall have exercised 
its power, or some case of state oppression by denial of equal justice in 
its courts shall have claimed a decision at our hands. We find none 
such in the case before us.” 
The dissenting opinions are as to both the matters discussed by 
Judge Miller, both the character of the state law and the extent of 
legislative ground covered by the prohibitions in the amendment. 
The power of Congress to legislate, touched upon by Judge Miller, 
was not really involved in the case, and accordingly the dissenting 
opinions refer to that, as indeed he does, merely for the light which 
that clause in the amendment may throw upon the meaning of the 
one over which the contention is. The dissenting judges take 
the position that the act itself creates so unreasonable a monoply as 
to take it outside of the acknowledged jurisdiction of the legislature 
to prescribe how within city limits employments of the kind dealt 
with may be carried on. 
The main controversy and point of disagreement, however, is 
as to the meaning of the clause ‘‘ abridge the privileges or immuni- 
ties of citizens of the United States,’’ and what power was given to 
Congress in authorizing it to legislate to prevent the states from 
abridging it. Judge Field thought that it secured equal rights to 
all citizens of a state by virtue of their all being citizens of the 
United States, and that consequently it forbade any such mo- 
nopoly as the Louisiana law created. Judge Bradley calls attention 
to the fact that the power of Parliament to create monopolies can- 
not be appealed to in this country by way of precedent as against 
constitutional provisions. He insists that the constitutional provi- 
sions in America have the same application to the legislature that 
176 Wall, 81. 
