The Wilson Act and the Constitution social and moral matters which in any way were connected with interstate com merce unless that social and moral policy conformed with that of the national Congress and the national courts. They gave to the inter state commerce clause of the Constitu tion much the same control over state legislation and local home rule, as the recent judicial constructions of the fourteenth amendment have given to that clause. They absolutely ignored the distinction before made and recog nized between things and regulations which were social and moral and those which were commercial, and to all intents and purposes overruled the License Cases and the statement made in the case of Gibbons v. Ogden* "that in spection laws, quarantine laws, health laws of every description, as well as laws for regulating the internal commerce of a state, originate from powers which are reserved to the states." They squarely took issue with the holding of the License Cases that—
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does other property. The state cannot, with a view to encourage its local manufacturers, prohibit the use of foreign articles or impose such a regulation as shall in effect be pro hibition. But it may tax such property as it taxes other and similar articles in the state either specifically or in the form of a license to sell. A license may be required to sell foreign articles when those of a domestic manufacture are sold without one. And if the foreign article be injurious to the health or morals of the community, a state may in the exercise of that conservative and great police power which lies at the foundation of its prosperity, prohibit the sale of it."
They erred because in their perusal of the history and of the decisions of the past they failed to distinguish between checks or interferences with the freedom of interstate commerce which were im posed for the mere purpose of raising revenue or the protection of a local trade monopoly and those which were imposed for the protection of health and morals. They failed to distinguish be tween things commercial and things social and to realize that it is in the latter that the roots of the doctrine of home rule and local sovereignty are the "The police powers of the state have uni most firmly embedded, and that no formly been maintained on the ground that government can long endure which the states have a right to make them, and this right is not to be questioned although in the denies to its localities, in things social exercise of it the laws and powers of the and moral at least, the "inherent rights United States must be affected, or the remedy of self-protection," and the right in a against alarming evils be incomplete large measure to judge of what is and the courts have practically and for the best of reasons placed such laws on the ground that what is not dangerous to its morals and they emanate from exclusive and independent its social life. powers enjoyed by the states." "The police The first case in which state regula power of a state and the foreign commercial tion based on these considerations was power must stand together. Neither of involved was that of New York v. Miln* them can be so exercised as to materially affect the other. The sources and objects and in it a statute was upheld which of these powers are exclusive, distinct and required the master of every vessel en tering the port of New York to make a independent and are essential to both gov ernments. The one operates upon our foreign report in writing of the name, place of intercourse, the other upon the internal con birth, last legal settlement, age and oc cerns of a state. The former ceases when the foreign product becomes commingled with the cupation of every passenger under a other property in the state. At this point penalty of $75.00 for each person not so the local law attaches and regulates it as it reported. In this case the Supreme • 11 Peters 102. « 9 Wheat. 1.
