1900. ] HASTINGS—POLICE POWER OF THE STATE. 447 
the great charter had in Great Britain to the officers of the crown, 
and that the English theory of the omnipotence of Parliament was 
never transferred to this country. 
The points of controversy in the court seem to have been: 1. Was 
the privilege of exclusively maintaining slaughter-houses conferred by 
the law a monopoly violative of common right? 2. Granting that 
it was such a monopoly, was authority to deal with and rectify the 
wrong given to the federal courts under the fourteenth amendment, 
and was state action in this direction and of the character involved 
forbidden by the fourteenth amendment in cases in which it would 
have been constitutional before its adoption? Judge Miller and 
the court answer both questions in the negative, the dissenting 
judges both in the affirmative. 
It would seem that the growth of decisions over these questions 
starting from this point have tended more and more to confirm the 
court’s determination over the real points decided, while it has over- 
thrown completely not a few of Judge Miller’s dicta. That the 
control of slaughter-houses for a great city is within the police 
power of the state, and if it solves the difficulty by giving their 
maintenance wholly to one company, its action may still be de- 
fended on that ground, and is not open to the same objection as if 
it were merely conferring an exclusive trading or manufacturing 
privilege, unconnected with its police power and not competent 
for it to bestow, seems certain. The making of ‘ privileges or im- 
munities of citizens of the United States’’ cover a right to carry on 
the business of slaughter-houses in any of the great cities would 
now seem a fanciful stretch of the fourteenth amendment, and the 
holding that the police powers of the state were not diminished by 
the fourteenth amendment, but only brought under the supervi- 
sion of the federal government, and improper uses of it made subject 
to the jurisdiction of the federal courts, is now firmly established. 
It is true that the latter fact has led to an application of the 
amendment on a far wider scale than Judge Miller anticipated. He 
himself lived long enough to see the amendment chiefly used not 
to vindicate the rights of the colored race, but principally for the 
correction of unjust and unreasonable classifications of citizens and 
subjects of legislation in what may be called the police laws of the 
states and to set aside unjust laws of taxation. 
It is easy to see that by merely adopting the broad construction 
of the terms ‘privileges or immunities’of a citizen of the United 
