448 HASTINGS—POLICE POWER OF THE STATE. [June 19, 
States,’’ for which the minority contended, the greater part of 
what we know by the term police power would have been trans- 
ferred to the federal government if such construction had been 
sustained and persisted in. Perhaps it must be admitted that in 
doing the contrary, in applying the narrow meaning he gave to 
them, he rendered them practically meaningless. It is certain that 
the political leaders who had procured the proposal and ratification 
of the amendment were bitterly disappointed. 
His determination, however, is in accordance with the settled 
habits of the American people, and he could safely calculate that 
such habits would prevail over any temporary political purpose. 
The majority of the court determined that the general control of 
this power should remain in the state, and that determination has 
been ratified and persisted in ever since by all who love the Ameri- 
can government or governments as made by the fathers. If there 
is a disposition to depart from the strictness of Judge Miller’s con- 
servatism, and if in spite of this decision of the court and its suc- 
cess the trend of events has made of the Supreme Court the ? “ tri- 
bunal where all questions of individual liberty and property rights 
are now finally determined,”’ it is because in the distinct grants of 
power, outside of the phrase ‘‘ privileges or immunities of citizens 
of the United States,’’ means have been found to curb in nearly all 
directions state legislation. |The change in that respect has gone 
and is going quite rapidly enough. The discovery that on our 
leading railways the traffic that stops within the state of its starting 
is but a trifle in comparison with the total carriage shows how 
thoroughly we have become, 
“ for all the great purposes for which the federal government is formed, 
one people, all citizens of the United States.”’ 
It is to be said, too, that the extent of the transfer to the United 
States courts of the function of defending these individual rights has 
proved to be the measure of the extent to which that court has rec- 
ognized the necessity of upholding the powers of the states. The 
Supreme Court, at all events, cannot be charged with forgetting the 
truth of Madison’s * remark, that if the states were to be destroyed 
the general government would find it necessary to restore them. 
To be sure, it had an object-lesson as to this after the civil war. 
1 Guthrie’s r4¢h Amdt., Preface 
2 Federalist, No. 14, Lodge ed., 79. 
