1900°] HASTINGS—POLICE POWER OF THE STATE. 473 
and Wilson ws. Blackbird Creek Marsh Company. He finally 
reaches the conclusion that Judge Marshall saw no opposition be- 
tween the two and that the latter case was considered by him to be 
so remotely connected with commerce that the state’s local legisla- 
tion under consideration in it was wholly within the police power 
of the state. 
As to this, it may be said that the most careful reading of Black- 
bird Creek Marsh Company case will fail to show that any such 
sharp distinction between commercial and police powers was in the 
mind of Chief Justice Marshall. That he did not regard the two 
cases as conflicting seems certain. ‘That he had expressly declined 
to decide in the first that the unexerted power of Congress is exclu- 
sive of that of the state would seem reason enough for his so 
thinking. 
In this same year of 1877, in the case of ‘Pensacola Telegraph Com- 
pany vs. The Western Union Telegraph Company, it was decided 
that while ordinarily corporations might be excluded at will from a 
state, as the previous cases of ?Paul vs. Virginia and *Bank of 
Augusta vs. Earl had determined, yet telegraph companies were by 
-act of Congress permitted to set up lines along all post roads and 
all railway lines were post roads, therefore the Western Union 
Telegraph Company could lay its lines along a Florida railway, 
even where a Florida company had from the state an exclusive 
franchise to do so. Judge Field filed an energetic dissenting 
opinion from this decision and its plain consequences, viz., that 
Congress could legislate any kind of a transportation company into 
any state in defiance of its laws. But from this time the doctrine 
that transportation agencies authorized by Congress may not be ex- 
cluded from a state by its legislature was firmly established. 
At this term of the Supreme Court the case of *Railroad Com- 
pany vs. Richmond held in terms that 
“appropriate regulation of the use of property is not taking it within the 
meaning of the constitutional prohibition.” 
The Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac R. R. Co., incorpo- 
rated in 1834, had been then authorized to place on its road all 
machines, vehicles, carriages, wagons and teams necessary or proper 
for transportation, and required to furnish transportation for per- 
E96 0G S:,) I: 79) Fer,y B10: 
28 Wall, 168. 4°96: O5.S.5 529: 
