in the general government, and is therefore void. Fully admitting the police powers of the State, the court expressed itself to the effect that to extend the police power of a State over the subjects of commerce, nationwide in character, not purely local and of minor concern, like dams, harbor and pilot regulations, bridges over navigable rivers, piers, docks, etc., would make commerce subordinate to that power and would enable a State to bring within its police power any article of consumption that a State might wish to exclude, whether it belonged to that which was drunk, or to food which was eaten, or to clothing which was worn; that while a State under its police powers may by law resist and prevent the introduction of disease, pestilence or pauperism from abroad, yet disease, pestilence and pauperism are not subjects of commerce, although sometimes among its attendant evils. They are not things to be regulated and trafficked in, but to be prevented, and as long as liquors are the subject of ownership and property and therefore the lawful subjects of exchange, barter and traffic, not made by law unlike any other commodity in which a right of property and a right to traffic exists, then importation can not be prevented by a State law; and as sale thereof by the consignee in the destination State is a constituent of commerce itself, the sale can not be prevented by a State under claim of its control over the commodity under its police power. The court reviewed the position taken in the License Cases with respect to the silence of Congress, and in opposition thereto held, as it had previously held in the Bowman case, that:

""The absence of any law of Congress on the subject is equivalent to its declaration that commerce in that matter shall be free. Thus the absence of regulations as to interstate commerce with reference to any particular subject is taken as a declaration that the importation of that article into the States shall be unrestricted.'

"The court overruled the decision in Pierce v. New Hampshire (License Cases), 5 How., 504, 12 L. Ed., 256, and held that liquor is a legitimate article of commerce, that an interstate commercial transaction. in liquor is not complete upon delivery to the consignee, but extends to and includes the subject sale thereof by the consignee, and that, even when Congress is silent upon the subject, a statute of a State, prohibiting the sale of imported liquor by the consignee in an interstate transaction, where the sale is made in the unbroken original package, is unconstitutional and void, as repugnant to the commerce clause to the Constitution, granting to Congress alone the power to regulate commerce among the States.

"In this and in the preceding cases of the same decisional trend were vigorous dissenting opinions delivered in maintenance of the principle that the regulation of the sale and traffic in liquor is within the police power of a State, even to the prevention of sale after arrival and to the exclusion of liquor by importation.

"The decision in the Leisy case, extending to an interstate commercial transaction in liquor the right of sale in the original package by the consignee in the destination State, regardless of the laws of such

State prohibiting such sale, was rendered April 28, 1890, and there was immediately introduced in Congress to meet that decision and to annul its force, which was enacted into law on August 8, 1890, and is known as the 'Wilson Law.'

"The Wilson Act provides: "That all fermented, distilled or other intoxicating liquors or liquids transported into any State or territory or remaining therein for use, consumption, sale or storage therein, shall upon arrival in such State or Territory be subject to the operation and effect of the laws of such State or Territory enacted in the exercise of its police powers, to the same extent and in the same manner as though such liquids or liquors had been produced in such State or Territory, and shall not be exempt therefrom by reason of being introduced therein in original packages or otherwise.' Act of Aug. 8, 1890, c. 728, 26 Stat., 313 (U. S. Comp. St., 1901, p. 3177).

"It thus appears that the police power which the Supreme Court in the License Cases conceded to the States, in regulation or preventing a resale by consignee of an imported article in the original package, was denied to the States by the Supreme Court in the Leisy case, and that the right thus first conceded, and then denied, was determined by the Wilson law. The point of decision in the two named cases and the matter contemplated as the subject of the Wilson law, as finally defined, was restricted to the right of a State to regulate or prevent a resale of liquor upon delivery, and did not extend to the right of a State to regulate or prohibit the importation of liquor, the law upon the latter point remaining as decided in Bowman v. Chicago Railway Co., supra. "Upon the enactment of the Wilson law two questions immediately arose: First, the constitutionality of the law in depriving the consignee of liquor in an interstate transaction of his theretofore recognized right to sell the liquor in the original package in the destination State, as an ingredient or constituent element of commerce; and, second, if constitutional, when and at what point in the interstate transaction did liquor lose its interstate characteristic, and become 'subject to the operation and effect of the laws' of the destination State, under the terms of the statute that liquors transported into any State shall upon arrival in such State be subject to the operation and effect of the laws of such State.'

"These questions and such others as were related to them had been considered and decided by the Supreme Court in a number of cases, to the leading ones of which reference will be made, showing the law as it stood from the date of the enactment of the Wilson law in 1890 to the year 1913.

"By these decisions the sovereign powers of the States and of the United States over matters exclusively their own were again defined and asserted. In re Rahrer, 140 U. S., 545, 11 Sup. Ct. Rep., 865, 35 L. Ed., 572, the court said:

"(a) The power of the State to impose restraints and burdens upon persons and property, in conservation, and promotion of the public. health, good order and prosperity, is a power originally and always be

longing to the States, nor surrendered by them to the general government nor directly restrained by the Constitution of the United States, and essentially exclusive.

"(b) The power of Congress to regulate commerce among the several States, when the subjects of that power are national in their nature, is also exclusive. The Constitution does not provide that interstate commerce shall be free, but by the grant of this exclusive power to regulate it, it was left free except as Congress might impose restraint. Therefore, it has been determined that the failure of Congress to exercise this exclusive power in any case is an expression of its will that the subject shall be free from restrictions or impositions upon it by the several States. Robbins v. Shelby Taxing District, 120 U. S., 489 (7 Sup. Ct. Rep., 592, 30 L. Ed., 694). And if a law passed by a State in the exercise of its acknowledged powers comes into conflict with that will, the Congress and the State can not occupy the position of equally opposing sovereignties, because the Constitution declares its supremacy and that of the laws passed in pursuance thereof. Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat., 1, 210 (6 Law Ed., 23). That which is not supreme must yield to that which is supreme. Brown v. Maryland, 12 Wheat., 419, 448 (6 L. Ed., 678).

"(c) That Congress can neither delegate its own powers to a State nor enlarge the powers that belong to a State.'

"Recognizing these as firmly established principles, susceptible of dispute only in their application to the given facts of a case or to the precise terms of a statute, it was decided:

"(1) That the right to have and use intoxicating liquor for personal purposes is denied no one by either State or Federal laws.

"(2) That intoxicating liquors constitute a legitimate subject of interstate commerce. Vance v. Vandercook Co., 170 U. S., 438, 444, 18 Sup. Ct. Rep., 674, 42 L. Ed., 1100; L. & N. R. R. Co. v. Cook Brewing Co., 223 U. S., 70, 32 Sup. Ct. Rep., 189, 56 L. Ed., 355. "(3) That liquor, as a designated subject of interstate commerce, may be governed by a regulation which divests it of that character, when that regulation is promulgated by a law of the Federal government, prescribing one common rule, the uniformity of which is not affected or disturbed by variations in State laws dealing with the same subject. In re Rahrer, 140 U. S., 545, 461, 11 Sup. Ct. Rep., 865, 35 L. Ed., 572. "(4) That the right of a consignce to sell imported merchandise in the original package is not a right conferred or protected by the Constitution. In re Rahrer, 140 U. S., 545, 11 Sup. Ct. Rep., 865, 35 L. Ed., 572.

66 (5) That by the Wilson law Congress divested interstate commerce in liquor of one of its theretofore interstate characteristics, namely, the right of sale by the consignee, not by delegating the Federal power over the subject to the States, nor by permitting the commerce in the commodity to be regulated by the States, but by bringing to bear directly upon interstate commerce itself, the force of its own rule applicable to all interstate transactions in liquor without regard to local laws of

the destination States, that the interstate commercial transaction in liquor shall terminate upon the arrival of the liquor in the destination State, and with the termination of the interstate transaction terminates the Federal control, and thereafter brings the State control thereover. In re Rahrer, 140 U. S., 545, 564, 11 Sup. Ct. Rep., 865, 35 L. Ed., 572. "(6) That the Wilson law, in so far as its purpose or operation is to divest liquor of its interstate commercial quality upon arrival in a destination State, and to prevent resale or other disposition thereof, except under the laws of the State in which it has arrived, is a valid exercise of the power conferred upon Congress by the commerce clause of the Constitution. In re Rahrer, 140 U. S., 545, 564, 11 Sup. Ct. Rep., 865, 35 L. Ed., 572; Rhodes v. Iowa, 170 U. S., 412, 420, 18 Sup. Ct. Rep., 664, 42 L. Ed., 1088.

"(7) That the expression of the Wilson Act, that liquor 'shall upon arrival in (the destination) State be subject to the operation and effect of the laws of such State,' did not mean arrival within State territory merely, but meant arrival at the point of completion of the interstate transaction, namely, in the hands of the consignee; that the Wilson law conferred no right upon a State to forbid a common carrier to transport liquor from one State into another State, or to stop at the State line an interstate shipment of liquor, or otherwise to interfere with or apply its laws to such interstate shipment until the transportation was concluded by delivery to the consignee. Rhodes v. Iowa, 170 U. S., 412, 18 Sup. Ct. Rep., 664, 42 L. Ed., 1088; Vance v. Vandercook Co., 170 U. S., 438, 18 Sup. Ct. Rep., 674, 42 L. Ed., 1100; Heymann v. Southern Ry. Co., 203 U. S., 270, 27 Sup. Ct. Rep., 104, 51 L. Ed., 178, 7 Ann. Cas., 1130; Adams Express Co. v. Kentucky, 214 U. S., 218, 29 Sup. Ct. Rep., 633, 53 L. Ed., 972; L. & N. R. R. Co. v. Cook Brewing Co., 223 U. S., 70, 32 Sup. Ct. Rep., 189, 56 L. Ed., 355. "(8) That a common carrier is not forbidden by the Wilson law to transport liquor from one State into another State, even when by the laws of the latter State the shipment as well as the sale of liquor is prohibited, and that, on the contrary, such shipment, when it constitutes an interstate commercial transaction, is not only protected, but may be compelled, by the commerce clause of the Constitution, notwithstanding such a shipment may be in open violation of the laws of the State into which the shipment is made, or notwithstanding the carrier might have notice that the consignee intended to sell the liquor, when received, or in some other way to dispose of it in violation of the State law. L. & N. R. R. Co. v. Cook Brewing Co., 223 U. S., 70, 32 Sup. Ct. Rep., 189, 56 L. Ed., 355; Adams Express Co. v. Commonwealth, 154 Ky., 462, 157 S. W., 908, 48 L. R. A. (N. S.), 342.

""Thus stood the law with respect to State and Federal control over the sale and shipment of liquor until the year 1913, when Congress enacted a statute known generally by the name of its authors as the "Webb-Kenyon Law."

"The Webb-Kenyon bill, after its introduction, was subjected to vigorous debate and important amendment, with the result that the

popular impression of that legislation has been gathered more from the controversy that revolved about it than from knowledge of the measure itself. It is not unnatural, therefore, that the popular conception of the law is that it confers upon a State the power absolutely and totally to prohibit the importation of liquor for any purpose, while an examination of the precise terms of the law shows a very different purpose and a very different power.

"The history of contemporaneous legislation, as well as legislative debates, may in rare instances be resorted to and considered by courts in searching for the meaning of a law when the meaning is obscure, and in discovering the evils intended to be remedied when those evils are in doubt or unknown. In view of the plain language and intent of the Webb-Kenyon law, however, the court would not be justified in employing that means to aid it in reaching its conclusion, but in view of the popular misunderstanding of the law and of the purpose and extent of its provisions, entertained not by its authors and supporters in Congress, as disclosed by such of the debates as were presented to us in the briefs, but by those who have not studied and in some instances have not read the law, the court feels it to be within its province to correct this popular misconception, by adverting to the history of the legislation that surrounded the bill, and that resulted in its enactment.

"The Webb-Kenyon bill, as introduced into Congress, consisted of two sections. The first section of the bill provided, in substance, that the shipment or transportation of liquor from one State into any other, which liquor is intended by any person interested therein, directly or indirectly, or in any manner connected with the transaction' to be received, possessed, or kept, or in any manner used, in violation of any law of such State, 'enacted in the exercise of the police power of such State,' is prohibited, and any 'contracts pertaining to such transactions are declared to be null and void,' and 'no suit or action shall be maintained upon any such contract, or for the enforcement or protection of any alleged right' based upon such contract, or for the protection in any manner whatsoever of such prohibited transaction.'

"The expression by any person . . in any manner connected with the transaction' may have meant transaction of shipment, in which event the expression included common carriers; and the concluding expression, prohibiting the enforcement, by suit, of rights growing out of a contract and of protection in any manner whatsoever of such prohibited transactions,' manifestly contemplated the protection of the commerce clause of the Constitution.

"The second section of the bill provided that any liquor transported in any State, or remaining therein for use, consumption, sale or storage, shall upon arrival within the boundaries of such State, and before delivery to the consignee, be subject to the operation and effect of the laws of such State enacted in the exercise of its reserved police powers, to the same extent and in the same manner as though such liquor had been produced in such State. H. R. 17593, 62d Congress, introduced Jan