Legal Aspect of Fees. 
203 
long defined the police power in such a way as to make it co¬ 
extensive with the whole internal government of a state. But 
later decisions have limited the scope of this power in one 
direction, and extended it in another. In the case of Barbie vs. 
Connolly * 1 the Supreme Court has so far narrowed the conception 
as to place the development and administration of common law 
outside of its realm; and writers on political science have, in 
theory at least, gone further and limited the conception still 
more. Although the general nature of the power has been de¬ 
fined, still the outlines are left very vague and undetermined. 
Even if the early view be accepted, that a license charge which 
yields revenue is a tax and an exercise of the taxing power, 
while a charge which will cover only the necessary expenses of 
issuance, and the additional labor of officers thereby imposed, 
is an exercise of the police power, still, even this apparently 
simple and clear distinction would leave a large field within 
which courts and legislators might exercise their discretion. 
In Judge Cooley’s words 2 : “The courts will not inquire very 
closely into the expense of a license, with a view to adjudge it 
a tax, where it does not appear to be unreasonable in amount 
in view of its purpose as regulation. ” 
The various courts are therefore compelled to find other justi¬ 
fications for fees than the mere fact that they are levied under 
the police power. Charges are found which are perfectly legit¬ 
imate, but which far exceed the cost of the regulation carried 
out by the government. The courts have been compelled to 
admit that a license fee is not necessarily limited to the cost of 
regulation, and that it is not necessarily an exercise of the 
police power. In the leading case of Ash vs. People 3 the court 
decided that “ the exaction is not a tax, it is but a reasonable 
compensation which the city demands from those who will not 
of property, of the whole people of the state or of any individual within 
it, and whose operation was within the territorial limit of the state and 
upon the persons and things within its jurisdiction.” 
1 113 United States, 27. 
2 Cooley’s Constitutional Limitations , p. 243, 6th ed. 
3 11 Mich., 347. The city of Detroit established a city meat market and 
required persons keeping meat shops outside of this market to pay a license 
fee of per annum. The ordinance was sustained. 
