The right of the owner or consignee to commute by paying a small sum instead of giving a bond of indemnity for each does not render the law invalid. This is at the option of the owner or consignee. It cannot be tortured into an indirect mode of imposing a tax or duty upon the passenger as such. The option is allowed as a favor to the owner or consignee of the vessel. The commutation is by no means as perfect a protection to the State as a bond on behalf of each indigent person landed. It cannot seriously be contended that this statute is void because it is in conflict with any statute of the United States, or treaty made by it. In Commissioners of Immigration v. North German Lloyd, which was an action to prevent the appellants who were the respondents from requiring bonds or commutation thereof from all passengers, the court below granted the injunction. Messrs. Samuel R. & C. L. Walker for the appellants. MR. JUSTICE MILLER delivered the opinion of the court. In the case of the City of New York v. Miln, reported in 11 Pet. 103, the question of the constitutionality of a statute of the State concerning passengers in vessels coming to the port of New York was considered by this court. It was an act passed Feb. 11, 1824, consisting of several sections. The first section, the only one passed upon by the court, required the master of every ship or vessel arriving in the port of New York from any country out of the United States, or from any other State of the United States, to make report in writing, and on oath, within twenty-four hours after his arrival, to the mayor of the city, of the name, place of birth, last legal settlement, age, and occupation of every person brought as a passenger from any country out of the United States, or from any of the United States into the port of New York, or into any of the United States, and of all persons landed from the ship, or put on board, or suffered to go on board, any other vessel during the voyage, with intent of proceeding to the city of New York. A penalty was prescribed of seventy-five dollars for each passenger not so reported, and for every person whose name, place of birth, last legal settlement, age, and occupation should be falsely reported. The other sections required him to give bond, on the demand of the mayor, to save harmless the city from all expense of support and maintenance of such passenger, or to return any passenger, deemed liable to become a charge, to his last place of settlement; and required each passenger, not a citizen of the United States, to make report of himself to the mayor, stating his age, occupation, the name of the vessel in which he arrived, the place where he landed, and name of the commander of the vessel. We gather from the report of the case that the defendant, Miln, was sued for the penalties claimed for refusing to make the report required in the first section. A division of opinion was certified by the judges of the Circuit Court on the question, whether the act assumes to regulate commerce between the port of New York and foreign ports, and is unconstitutional and void. This court, expressly limiting its decision to the first section of the act, held that it fell within the police powers of the States, and was not in conflict with the Federal Constitution. From this decision Mr. Justice Story dissented, and in his opinion stated that Chief Justice Marshall, who had died between the first and the second argument of the case, fully concurred with him in the view that the statute of New York was void, because it was a regulation of commerce forbidden to the States. In the Passenger Cases, reported in 7 How. 283, the branch of the statute not passed upon in the preceding case came under consideration in this court. It was not the same statute, but was a law relating to the marine hospital on Staten Island. It authorized the health commissioner to demand, and, if not paid, to sue for and recover, from the master of every vessel arriving in the port of New York from a foreign port, one dollar and fifty cents for each cabin passenger, and one dollar for each steerage passenger, mate, sailor, or mariner, and from the master of each coasting vessel twenty-five cents for each person on board. These moneys were to be appropriated to the use of the hospital. The defendant, Smith, who was sued for the sum of $295 for refusing to pay for 295 steerage passengers on board the British ship"Henry Bliss," of which he was master, demurred to the declaration on the ground that the act was contrary to the Constitution of the United States, and void. From a judgment against him, affirmed in the Court of Errors of the State of New York, he sued out a writ of error, on which the question was brought to this court. It was here held, at the January Term, 1849, that the statute was "repugnant to the constitution and laws of the United States, and therefore void." 7 How. 572. Immediately after this decision, the State of New York modified her statute on that subject, with a view, no doubt, to avoid the constitutional objection; and amendments and alterations have continued to be made up to the present time. As the law now stands, the master or owner of every vessel landing passengers from a foreign port is bound to make a report similar to the one recited in the statute held to be valid in the case of New York v. Miln; and on this report the mayor is to indorse a demand upon the master or owner that he give a bond for every passenger landed in the city, in the penal sum of $300, conditioned to indemnify the commissioners of emigration, and every county, city, and town in the State, against any expense for the relief or support of the person named in the bond for four years thereafter; but the owner or consignee may commute for such bond, and be released from giving it, by paying, within twenty-four hours after the landing of the passengers, the sum of one dollar and fifty cents for each one of them. If neither the bond be given nor the sum paid within the twenty-four hours, a penalty of $500 for each pauper is incurred, which is made a lien on the vessel, collectible by attachment at the suit of the Commissioner of Emigration. Conceding the authority of the Passenger Cases, which will be more fully considered hereafter, it is argued that the change in the statute now relied upon requiring primarily a bond for each passenger landed, as an indemnity against his becoming a future charge to the state or county, leaving it optional with the ship-owner to avoid this by paying a fixed sum for each passenger, takes it out of the principle of the case of Smith v. Turner, the Passenger Case from New York. It is said that the statute in that case was a direct tax on the passenger, since the act authorized the shipmaster to collect it of him, and that on that ground alone was it held void; while in the present case the requirement of the bond is but a suitable regulation under the power of the State to protect its cities and towns from the expense of supporting persons who are paupers or diseased, or helpless women and children, coming from foreign countries. In whatever language a statute may be framed, its purpose must be determined by its natural and reasonable effect; and if it is apparent that the object of this statute, as judged by that criterion, is to compel the owners of vessels to pay a sum of money for every passenger brought by them from a foreign shore, and landed at the port of New York, it is as much a tax on passengers if collected from them, or a tax on the vessel or owners for the exercise of the right of landing their passengers in that city, as was the statute held void in the Passenger Cases. To require a heavy and almost impossible condition to the exercise of this right, with the alternative of payment of a small sum of money, is, in effect, to demand payment of that sum. Το suppose that a vessel, which once a month lands from three hundred to one thousand passengers, or from three thousand to twelve thousand per annum, will give that many bonds of $300 with good sureties, with a covenant for four years, against accident, disease, or poverty of the passenger named in such bond, is absurd, when this can be avoided by the payment of one dollar and fifty cents collected of the passenger before he embarks on the vessel. Such bonds would amount in many instances, for every voyage, to more than the value of the vessel. The liability on the bond would be, through a long lapse of time, contingent on circumstances which the bondsman could neither foresee nor control. The cost of preparing the bond and approving sureties, with the trouble incident to it in each case, is greater than the sum required to be paid as commutation. It is inevitable, under such a law, that the money would be paid for each passenger, or the statute resisted or evaded. It is a law in its purpose and effect imposing a tax on the owner of the vessel for the privilege of landing in New York passengers transported from foreign countries. It is said that the purpose of the act is to protect the State against the consequences of the flood of pauperism immigrating from Europe, and first landing in that city. But it is a strange mode of doing this to tax every passenger alike who comes from abroad. The man who brings with him important additions to the wealth of the country, and the man who is perfectly free from disease, and brings to aid the industry of the country a stout heart and a strong arm, are as much the subject of the tax as the diseased pauper who may become the object of the charity of the city the day after he lands from the vessel. No just rule can make the citizen of France landing from an English vessel on our shore liable for the support of an English or Irish pauper who lands at the same time from the same vessel. So far as the authority of the cases of New York v. Miln and Passenger Cases can be received as conclusive, they decide that the requirement of a catalogue of passengers, with statements of their last residence, and other matters of that character, is a proper exercise of State authority and that the requirement of the bond, or the alternative payment of money for each passenger, is void, because forbidden by the constitution and laws of the United States. But the Passenger Cases (so called because a similar statute of the State of Massachusetts was the subject of consideration at the same term with that of New York) were decided by a bare majority of the court. Justices McLean, Wayne, Catron, McKinley, and Grier held both statutes void; while Chief Justice Taney, and Justices Daniel, Nelson, and Woodbury, held them valid. Each member of the court delivered a separate opinion, giving the reasons for his judgment, except Judge Nelson, none of them professing to be the authoritative opinion of the court. Nor is there to be found, in the reasons given by the judges who constituted the majority, such harmony of views as would give that weight to the decision which it lacks by reason of the divided judgments of the members of the court. Under these circumstances, with three cases before us arising under statutes of three different States |