particular oil there in question submitting to the required local inspection.

But a law providing for the inspection of animals whose meats are designed for human food cannot be regarded as a rightful exertion of the police powers of the State, if the inspection prescribed is of such a character, or is burdened with such conditions, as will prevent altogether the introduction into the State of sound. meats, the product of animals slaughtered in other States. It is one thing for a State to exclude from its limits cattle, sheep, or swine, actually diseased, or meats that, by reason of their condition, or the condition of the animals from which they are taken, are unfit for human food, and punish all sales of such animals or of such meats within its limits. It is quite a different thing for a State to declare, as does Minnesota by the necessary operation of its statute, that fresh beef, veal, mutton, lamb, or pork-articles that are used in every part of this country to support human life-shall not be sold at all for human food within its limits, unless the animal from which such meats are taken is inspected in that State, or, as is practically said, unless the animal is slaughtered in that State.

One other suggestion by the counsel for the State deserves to be examined. It is, that so far as this statute is concerned, the people of Minnesota can purchase in other States fresh beef, veal, mutton, lamb, and pork, and bring such meats into Minnesota for their own personal use. We do not perceive that this view strengthens the case for the State, for it ignores the right which people of other States have in commerce between those States and the State of Minnesota. And it ignores the right of the people of Minnesota to bring into that State, for purposes of sale, sound and healthy meat, wherever such meat may have come into existence. But there is a consideration arising out of the suggestion just alluded to which militates somewhat against the theory that the statute in question is a legitimate exertion of the police powers of the State for the protection of the public health. If every hotelkeeper, railroad or mining corporation, or contractor, in Minnesota, furnishing subsistence to large numbers of persons, and every private family in that State, that is so disposed, can, without violating this statute, bring into the State from other States and use for their own purposes, fresh beef, veal, mutton, lamb and pork, taken from animals slaughtered outside Minnesota which may not have been inspected at all, or not within twenty-four hours before being slaughtered, what becomes of the argument, pressed with so much earnestness, that the health of the people of that State

requires that they be protected against the use of meats from animals not inspected in Minnesota within the twenty-four hours before being slaughtered? If the statute, while permitting the sale of meats from animals slaughtered, inspected and "certified" in that State, had expressly forbidden the introduction from other States, and their sale in Minnesota, of all fresh meats, of every kind, without making any distinction between those that were from animals inspected on the hoof and those that were not so inspected, its unconstitutionality could not have been doubted. And yet it is so framed that this precise result is attained as to all sales in Minnesota, for human food, of meats from animals. slaughtered in other States.

In the opinion of this court the statute in question, so far as its provisions require, as a condition of sales in Minnesota of fresh beef, veal, mutton, lamb or pork for human food, that the animals from which such meats are taken shall have been inspected in Minnesota before being slaughtered, is in violation of the Constitution of the United States and void.

The judgment discharging the appellee from custody is affirmed,

V. THE POLICE POWER.

MUNN v. ILLINOIS.

94 U. S., 113. Decided 1876.

ERROR to the Supreme Court of the State of Illinois. [The facts are sufficiently stated in the opinion of the court.] MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WAITE delivered the opinion of the court. The question to be determined in this case is whether the general assembly of Illinois can, under the limitations upon the legislative powers of the States imposed by the Constitution of the United States, fix by law the maximum of charges for the storage of grain in warehouses at Chicago and other places in the State having not less than one hundred thousand inhabitants, "in which grain is stored in bulk, and in which the grain of different owners is mixed together, or in which grain is stored in such a manner that the identity of different lots or parcels cannot be accurately preserved."

It is claimed that such a law is repugnant

1. To that part of sect. 8, art. 1, of the Constitution of the United States which confers upon Congress the power "to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several States;"

2. To that part of sect. 9 of the same article, which provides that "no preference shall be given by any regulation of commerce or revenue to the ports of one State over those of another;" and

3. To that part of amendment 14 which ordains that no State shall "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

We will consider the last of these objections first.

Every statute is presumed to be constitutional. The courts ought not to declare one to be unconstitutional, unless it is clearly So. If there is doubt, the expressed will of the legislature should be sustained.

The Constitution contains no definition of the word "deprive," as used in the Fourteenth Amendment. To determine its signification, therefore, it is necessary to ascertain the effect which usage has given it, when employed in the same or a like connection.

While this provision of the amendment is new in the Constitution of the United States, as a limitation upon the powers of the States, it is old as a principle of civilized government. It is found in Magna Charta, and, in substance if not in form, in nearly or quite all the constitutions that have been from time to time adopted by the several States of the Union. By the Fifth Amendment, it was introduced into the Constitution of the United States as a limitation upon the powers of the national government, and by the Fourteenth, as a guarantee against any encroachments upon an acknowledged right of citizenship by the legislatures of the States.

When the people of the United Colonies separated from Great Britain, they changed the form, but not the substance, of their government. They retained for the purposes of government all the powers of the British Parliament, and through their State constitutions, or other forms of social compact, undertook to give practical effect to such as they deemed necessary for the common good and the security of life and property. All the powers which they retained they committed to their respective States, unless in express terms or by implication reserved to themselves. Subsequently, when it was found necessary to establish a national government for national purposes, a part of the powers of the States and of the people of the States was granted to the United States and the people of the United States. This grant operated as a further limitation upon the powers of the States so that now the governments of the States possess all the powers of the Parliament of England, except such as have been delegated to the United States or reserved by the people. The reservations by the people are shown in the prohibitions of the constitutions.

When one becomes a member of society, he necessarily parts with some rights or privileges which, as an individual not affected by his relations to others, he might retain. "A body politic," as aptly defined in the preamble of the Constitution of Massachusetts, "is a social compact by which the whole people covenants with each citizen, each citizen with the whole people, that all shall be governed by certain laws for the common good." This does not confer power upon the whole people to control rights which are purely and exclusively private (Thorpe v. R. & V. Railroad Co.,

27 Vt., 143); but it does authorize the establishment of laws requiring each citizen to so conduct himself, and so use his own property, as not unnecessarily to injure another. This is the very essence of government, and has found expression in the maxim, sic utere tuo ut alienum non laedas. From this source come the police powers, which, as was said by Mr. Chief Justice Taney in the License Cases, 5 How., 583, "are nothing more or less than the powers of government inherent in every sovereignty,

that is to say, the power to govern men and things." Under these powers the government regulates the conduct of its citizens one towards another, and the manner in which each shall use his own property, when such regulation becomes necessary for the public good. In their exercise it has been customary in England from time immemorial, and in this country from its first colonization, to regulate ferries, common carriers, hackmen, bakers, millers, wharfingers, innkeepers, &c., and in so doing to fix a maximum of charge to be made for services rendered, accommodations furnished, and articles sold. To this day, statutes. are to be found in many of the States upon some or all these subjects; and we think it has never yet been successfully contended that such legislation came within any of the constitutional prohibitions against interference with private property. With the Fifth Amendment in force, Congress, in 1820, conferred power upon the city of Washington "to regulate .. . . the rates of wharfage at private wharves, the sweeping of chimneys, and the weight and

and to fix the rates of fees therefor, quality of bread," 3 Stat., 587, sec. 7; and, in 1848, "to make all necessary regulations respecting hackney carriages and the rates of fare of the same, and the rates of hauling by cartmen, wagoners, carmen, and draymen, and the rates of commission of auctioneers," 9 id., 224, sect. 2.

From this it is apparent that, down to the time of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, it was not supposed that statutes regulating the use, or even the price of the use, of private property necessarily deprived an owner of his property without due process of law. Under some circumstances they may, but not under all. The amendment does not change the law in this particular: it simply prevents the States from doing that which will operate as such a deprivation.

This brings us to inquire as to the principles upon which this power of regulation rests, in order that we may determine what is within and what without its operative effect. Looking, then, to the common law, from whence came the right which the Con