454 HASTINGS—-POLICE POWER OF THE STATE. [June 19, 
exacted thereon by the state or the companies that owned them was ever 
regarded as an infringement of the constitution. When constructed by 
the state itself they might be the source of revenue largely exceeding the 
outlay, without exciting even the question of constitutionality.”’ 
‘“So when, by the improvements and discoveries of mechanical 
science, railroads came to be built and furnished with all the apparatus 
of all-absorbing transportation, no one imagined that the state, if the 
owner of the works, might not exact any amount whatever of toll or fare 
for freight, or authorize its citizens or corporations, if owners, to do the same. 
Had the state built the road in question, it might to this day unchal- 
lenged and unchallengeable have charged $2.50 for carrying passengers 
between Baltimore and Washington. So might the railroad company 
under authority from the state if it saw fit do so. These are positions 
which must be conceded; no one has ever doubted them.” 
He finds thus an unlimited right of the state to charge or author- 
ize others to charge for transportation from the simple fact that the 
railroads are its own work, or the work of others acting by its au- 
thority : 
“It has discretion as to the amount of that compensation ; that discretion 
is a legislative, a sovereign discretion, and in its very nature is unrestricted 
and uncontrolled.” 
From this first utterance of the court as to the state’s rights over 
transportation rates, repeated several times in the course of the 
opinion, there was no dissent. 
Judge Miller dissented briefly on the ground that the charge 
which the court was finding legal was a special exaction for the 
benefit of the state of Maryland for the privilege of bringing passen- 
gers to the national capital, a right which the constitution intended 
should be untrammeled in accordance with the principles an- 
nounced by him in the case of ‘Crandall vs. Nevada. So to Judge 
Bradley’s main position, thus strenuously declared in this first case 
involving the question, that the power of the state over rates of 
transportation within its boundaries was unlimited and sovereign, 
there was at this time no dissent. 
Subsequently, as we shall see, this doctrine was greatly modified. 
It may be noted that this whole question of rates of transporta- 
tion was not brought into the state Supreme Court by the granger 
agitation, as is sometimes claimed and perhaps generally believed. 
This case of Railroad vs. Maryland and the preceding one of Rail- 
16 Wall, 35. 
