1900.] HASTINGS—POLICE POWER OF THE STATE. 459 
y) 
absence of legislation by Congress on the subject, 
ism and criminality from abroad. 
against pauper- 
“Such a right can only arise from a vital necessity for its exercise and 
cannot be carried beyond the scope of that necessity. When a state 
statute limited to provisions necessary and appropriate to that subject 
alone shall in a proper controversy come before us, it will be time 
enough to decide that question.”’ 
He finds the California statute, in the stretch of authority given to 
the commissioner of immigration and in its requirement of a 
bond ora money commutation, unnecessary, undesirable, and there- 
fore unconstitutional. 
Here we have the power to regulate foreign commerce and the 
foreign relations of the Union coming in collision with an attempt 
of California to regulate the admission of undesirable persons. 
The court finds (1) that the national authority is paramount ; then 
it finds that such authority is exclusive ; then it admits that there 
might an emergency arise which would warrant the state in taking 
action affecting these subjects, but finds that the action of the state 
in this instance is not of a kind ‘‘ necessary or proper for this pur- 
pose,’’ and the action of the state court is reversed and the law 
wiped out. It cannot be denied that as Judge Miller says, both in 
this case and in that of Henderson vs. New York, that the same 
act may often be equally well attributed to any of several powers 
of government. This, however, seems not to discourage continual 
efforts to draw important consequences from a supposed distinction 
between the essential natures of such powers. 
In this same year, 1875, the well-known case of ' United States 
vs. Cruikshank served, like that of United States vs. Reese, at 
once to emphasize the doctrines of the Slaughter-house cases and 
to indicate how far those cases were from answering the expecta- 
tions of those who framed the fourteenth amendment and the 
legislation connected with it, the civil rights and enforcement acts. 
The defendants were charged in thirty-two counts with con- 
spiracy under the sixth section of the enforcement act: (1) Band- 
ing together to intimidate two citizens of the United States 
persons of color with intent 
“to hinder and prevent them in their exercise and enjoyment of their 
lawful right and privilege to peaceably assemble with each other and 
other citizens of the United States for a peaceful and lawful purpose; ”’ 
192 U. S., 542. 
