d04 HASTINGS-—POLICE POWER OF THE STATE. [June 19, 
to establish any regulation of rates over railroads. This was ob- 
jected to, first, because it was the taking of property without due 
process, and, second, because it was a violation of their charters and 
an impairment of the obligation of the state’s contract. ‘These two 
questions, he thinks, were rightly resolved in those actions against 
the companies. The right of a state to impose such rates upon 
goods going beyond its borders, he thought, should be considered 
by itself. Citing State Freight Tax cases and Hall vs. DeCuir, he 
thinks they show that the court never intended to hold there is 
power in a state over goods going beyond it, and that such power 
is inconsistent with the free passage of persons and merchandise 
into and out of each state. 
Judge Bradley dissented, and Justices Waite and Gray with 
him, on the ground that the state court had a right to presume 
that a contract to haul from Peoria to New York for a fixed price 
was an agreement to haul over each mile of the designated route 
for a proportionate share of that price, and the varying of prices 
in this case was, therefore, a discrimination practiced within the 
state of Illinois and amenable to its laws. 
In holding that the state court might assume that the charge was 
at a uniform rate over the whole length of the route, and therefore 
at a forbidden rate in Illinois, the minority seem to have fairly 
exposed themselves to Judge Miller’s criticism. If Illinois could 
do that, so could Indiana and Ohio and Pennsylvania and New 
York as to the portion of the route lying through the territory of 
each ; and in the event of discordant regulations by these states 
through traffic would become impossible. 
Indeed, the holding now firmly adopted by the court, that the 
states have no sovereignty over interstate and foreign commerce 
for any purpose, that there is conferred by the federal constitution 
upon citizens of each state and of the United States an indefeasible 
right to take into or carry away from any state any article of com- 
merce they please, subject only to such regulations as Congress may 
make or sanction, effectually precludes the unimpeded exercise of 
such a police power as Judge Bradley talks about. 
There seems only an implied consent that the states may pro- 
vide for the public health, safety and morals in cases of real need 
by any regulation not forbidden by Congress. 
In * Robbins vs. Taxing District of Shelby County, it was de- 
1 120 U. S., 489. 
