Opinion of the Court. in these terms navigation and the transportation and transit of persons and property, as well as the purchase, sale, and exchange of commodities. For the regulation of commerce as thus defined, there can be only one system of rules, applicable alike to the whole country; and the authority which can act for the whole country can alone adopt such a system. Action upon it by separate States is not, therefore, permissible." The principle thus announced has a more obvious application to the circumstances of such a case as the present, when it is considered that the law of the State of Iowa under consideration, while it professes to regulate the conduct of carriers engaged in transportation within the limits of that State, nevertheless materially affects, if allowed to operate, the conduct of such carriers, both as respects their rights and obligations, in every other State into or through which they pass in the prosecution of their business of interstate transportation. In the present case, the defendant is sued as a common carrier in the State of Illinois, and the breach of duty alleged against it is a violation of the law of that State in refusing to receive and transport goods which, as a common carrier, by that law, it was bound to accept and carry. It interposes as a defence a law of the State of Iowa, which forbids the delivery of such goods within that State. Has the law of Iowa any extra territorial force which does not belong to the law of the State of Illinois? If the law of Iowa forbids the delivery, and the law of Illinois requires the transportation, which of the two shall prevail? How can the former make void the latter? In view of this necessary operation of the law of Iowa, if it be valid, the language of this court in the case of Hall v. De Cuir, 95 U. S. 485, 488, is exactly in point. It was there said: "But we think it may safely be said that state legislation, which seeks to impose a direct burden upon interstate commerce, or to interfere directly with its freedom, does encroach upon the exclusive power of Congress. The statute now under consideration, in our opinion, occupies that position. It does not act upon the business through the local instruments to be employed after coming within the State, but directly upon the business as it comes into the State from Opinion of the Court. without or goes out from within. While it purports only to control the carrier when engaged within the State, it must necessarily influence his conduct to some extent in the management of his business throughout his entire voyage. His disposition of passengers taken up and put down within the State, or taken up within to be carried without, cannot but affect in a greater or less degree those taken up without and brought within, and sometimes those taken up within and put down without. A passenger in the cabin set apart for the use of whites without the State must, when the boat comes within, share the accommodations of that cabin with such colored persons as may come on board afterwards, if the law is enforced. It was to meet just such a case that the commercial clause in the Constitution was adopted. The river Mississippi passes through or along the borders of ten different States, and its tributaries reach many more. The commerce upon these waters is immense, and its regulation clearly a matter of national concern. If each State was at liberty to regulate the conduct of carriers while within its jurisdiction, the confusion likely to follow could not but be productive of great inconvenience and unnecessary hardship. Each State could provide for its own passengers and regulate the transportation of its own freight, regardless of the interests of others. Nay, more; it could prescribe rules by which the carrier must be governed within the State, in respect to passengers and property brought from without. On one side of the river or its tributaries he might be required to observe one set of rules, and on the other another. Commerce cannot flourish in the midst of such embarrassments. No carrier of passengers can conduct his business with satisfaction to himself, or comfort to those employing him, if on one side of a state line his passengers, both white and colored, must be permitted to occupy the same cabin, and on the other be kept separate. Uniformity in the regulations by which he is to be governed from one end to the other of his route is a necessity in his business, and to secure it, Congress, which is untrammelled by state lines, has been invested with the exclusive legislative power of determining what such regulations shall be." Opinion of the Court. It is impossible to justify this statute of Iowa by classifying it as an inspection law. The right of the States to pass inspection laws is expressly recognized in Art. 1, § 10, of the Constitution, in the clause declaring that "no State shall, without the consent of Congress, lay any imposts or duties on imports or exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing its inspection laws." "And all such laws shall be subject to the revision and control of the Congress." The nature and character of the inspection laws of the States, contemplated by this provision of the Constitution, were very fully exhibited in the case of Turner v. Maryland, 107 U. S. 38. "The object of inspection laws," said Chief Justice Marshall in Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1, 203, "is to improve the quality of articles produced by the labor of a country; to fit them for exportation; or, it may be, for domestic use. They act upon the subject, before it becomes an article of foreign commerce, or of commerce among the States, and prepare it for that purpose." They are confined to such particulars as, in the estimation of the legislature and according to the customs of trade, are deemed necessary to fit the inspected article for the market, by giving to the purchaser public assurance that the article is in that condition, and of that quality, which makes it merchantable and fit for use or consumption. They are not founded on the idea that the things, in respect to which inspection is required, are dangerous or noxious in themselves. As was said in Turner v. Maryland, 107 U. S. 38, 55: "Recognized elements of inspection laws have always been-quality of the article, form, capacity, dimensions, and weight of package, mode of putting up, and marking and branding of various kinds—all these matters being supervised by a public officer having authority to pass or not pass the article as lawful merchandise, as it did or did not answer the prescribed requirements. It has never been regarded as necessary, and it is manifestly not necessary, that all of these elements should coexist in order to make a valid inspection law. Quality alone may be the subject of inspection, without other requirement, or the inspection may be made to extend to all of the above matters." It has never been regarded as within Opinion of the Court. the legitimate scope of inspection laws to forbid trade in respect to any known article of commerce, irrespective of its condition and quality, merely on account of its intrinsic nature and the injurious consequences of its use or abuse. For similar reasons the statute of Iowa under consideration cannot be regarded as a regulation of quarantine or a sanitary provision for the purpose of protecting the physical health of the community, or a law to prevent the introduction into the State of disease, contagious, infectious, or otherwise. Doubtless the States have power to provide by law suitable measures to prevent the introduction into the States of articles of trade, which, on account of their existing condition, would bring in and spread disease, pestilence, and death, such as rags or other substances infected with the germs of yellow fever or the virus of small-pox, or cattle or meat or other provisions that are diseased or decayed, or otherwise, from their condition and quality, unfit for human use or consumption. Such articles are not merchantable; they are not legitimate subjects of trade and commerce. They may be rightly outlawed as intrinsically and directly the immediate sources and causes of destruction to human health and life. The self-protecting power of each State, therefore, may be rightfully exerted against their introduction, and such exercises of power cannot be considered regulations of commerce prohibited by the Constitution. Upon this point, the observations of Mr. Justice Catron in The License Cases, 5 How. 504, 599, are very much to the point. Speaking of the police power, as reserved to the States, and its relation to the power granted to Congress over commerce, he said: "The assumption is, that the police power was not touched by the Constitution, but left to the States, as the Constitution found it. This is admitted; and whenever a thing, from character or condition, is of a description to be regulated by that power in the State, then the regulation may be made by the State, and Congress cannot interfere. But this must always depend on facts subject to legal ascertainment, so that the injured may have redress. And the fact must find its support in this, whether the prohibited article belongs to, and is subject to be regulated as part of, foreign commerce, or of Opinion of the Court. commerce among the States. If, from its nature, it does not belong to commerce, or if its condition, from putrescence or other cause, is such, when it is about to enter the State, that it no longer belongs to commerce, or, in other words, is not a commercial article, then the state power may exclude its introduction. And as an incident to this power, a State may use means to ascertain the fact. And here is the limit between the sovereign power of the state and the federal power. That is to say, that which does not belong to commerce is within the jurisdiction of the police power of the State; and that which does belong to commerce is within the jurisdiction of the United States. And to this limit must all the general views come, as I suppose, that were suggested in the reasoning of this court in the cases of Gibbons v. Ogden, Brown v. The State of Maryland, and New York v. Miln. What, then, is the assumption of the state court? Undoubtedly, in effect, that the State had the power to declare what should be an article of lawful commerce in the particular State; and having declared that ardent spirits and wines were deleterious to morals and health, they ceased to be commercial commodities there, and that then the police power attached, and consequently the powers of Congress could not interfere. The exclusive state power is made to rest, not on the fact of the state or condition of the article, nor that it is property usually passing by sale from hand to hand, but on the declaration found in the state laws, and asserted as the state policy, that it shall be excluded from commerce. And by this means the sovereign jurisdiction in the State is attempted to be created in a case where it did not previously exist. If this be the true construction of the constitutional provision, then the paramount power of Congress to regulate commerce is subject to a very material limitation; for it takes from Congress, and leaves with the States, the power to determine the commodities, or articles of property, which are the subjects of lawful commerce. Congress may regulate, but the States determine what shall or shall not be regulated. Upon this theory the power to regulate commerce, instead of being paramount over the subject, would become subordinate to the state police |