be made in respect of the prohibition of free tickets, free passes and free transportation. It solved the question when, without making any exceptions of existing contracts, it forbade by broad, explicit words any carrier to charge, demand, collect or receive a "greater or less or different compensation" for any services in connection with the transportation of passengers or property than was specified in its published schedules of rates. The court cannot add an exception based on equitable grounds when Congress forbore to make such an exception. Yturbide v. United States, 22 How. 290, 293. The words of the act therefore must be taken to mean that a carrier, engaged in interstate commerce, cannot charge, collect or receive for transportation on its road anything but money. In Armour Packing Company v. United States, 209 U. S. 56, 81, this court said: "There is no provision excepting special contracts from the operation of the law. One rate is to be charged, and that the one fixed and published in the manner pointed out in the statute, and subject to change in the only way open by the statute. There is no provision for the filing of contracts with shippers and no method of making them public defined in the statute. If the rates are subject to secret alteration by special agreement then the statute will fail of its purpose to establish a rate duly published, known to all, and from which neither shipper nor carrier may depart." So, in Adams Express Co. v. United States, 212 U. S. 522, 532, 533: "But the power of Congress over interstate transportation embraces all manner of carriage of that character-whether gratuitous or otherwise and, in the absence of express exceptions, we think it was the intention of Congress to prevent a departure from the published rates and schedules in any manner whatsoever. If this be not so, a wide door is opened to favoritism in the carriage of property in the instances mentioned, free of charge. If it is lawful, in view of the provisions of the Interstate Commerce Act, to

issue franks of the character under consideration in this case, then this right must be founded upon some exception incorporated in the act."

It is further said that the passes contemplated by the parties were not strictly free passes; for, it is argued, the railroad company would receive a valuable consideration for each one issued by it. This view is more plausible than sound, and does not meet the difficulty. Suffice it to say, in this case, that such passes, when issued, would be illegal under the act of Congress, by reason of their not being paid for in money, according to the company's schedule of rates, but in consideration only of the release by Mottley and wife of their claim for damages on account of the collision in question.

We now come to the question whether, assuming that the agreement of 1871 was valid when made, could Congress by any statute subsequently enacted make its enforcement by suit impossible? There are certain propositions at the base of this inquiry which we need not discuss at large, because they have become thoroughly established in our constitutional jurisprudence. One is, that the power granted to Congress to regulate commerce among the States and with foreign nations is complete in itself, and is unrestricted except by the limitations upon its authority to be found in the Constitution. Gibbons v.

Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1; Brown v. Maryland, 12 Wheat. 419; Addyston Pipe and Steel Co. v. United States, 175 U. S. 211, 229; Scranton v. Wheeler, 179 U. S. 141, 162, 163; C., B. & Q. R. R. Co. v. Drainage Com'rs, 200 U. S. 561; Union Bridge Co. v. United States, 204 U. S. 364, 400; Atlantic Coast Line &c. v. Riverside Mills, 219 U. S. 186, 202.

In the Addyston Pipe case, this court said that, under its power to regulate commerce, Congress "may enact such legislation as shall declare void and prohibit the performance of any contract between individuals or corpora

tions where the natural and direct effect of such a contract will be, when carried out, to directly, and not as a mere incident to other and innocent purposes, regulate to any substantial extent interstate commerce."

In the Scranton case, where a riparian owner sought compensation from the Government because his access to navigability had been materially obstructed by a pier constructed by the Government on the submerged grounds in front of his land, this court said: "The riparian owner acquired the right of access to navigability subject to the contingency that such right might become valueless in consequence of the erection under competent authority of structures on the submerged lands in front of his property for the purpose of improving navigation. When erecting the pier in question, the Government had no object in view except, in the interest of the public, to improve navigation. It was not designed arbitrarily or capriciously to destroy rights belonging to any riparian owner. What was done was manifestly necessary to meet the demands of international and interstate commerce."

In the Union Bridge Co. case the question was as to the constitutional authority of the Government to require the Bridge Company to make certain changes or alterations. in a bridge across a navigable river of the United States, in Pennsylvania, and which bridge the company owned and constantly used. It was admitted that the bridge had been lawfully erected. But ultimately, in view of the necessities of interstate commerce, it had become an unreasonable obstruction to free, open navigation by vessels and boats then in use, and, for that reason alone, the Government, by its constituted authorities proceeding under an act of Congress, ordered the Bridge Company at its own cost to make certain changes and alterations in the structure. This court held that there was no taking of property for public use in the constitutional sense, and that although the bridge when erected under the authority of VOL. CCXIX-31

Pennsylvania may have been a lawful structure, and although it may not have been an unreasonable obstruction to commerce, as then carried on, "it must be taken, under the cases cited and upon principle, not only that the company, when exerting the power conferred upon it by the State, did so with knowledge of the paramount authority of Congress to regulate commerce among the States, but that it erected the bridge subject to the possibility that Congress might, at some future time, when the public interest demanded, exert its power by appropriate legislation to protect navigation against unreasonable obstructions.'

Long before the above cases were decided it was said in Knox v. Lee, 12 Wall. 457, 550, 551, that "as in a state of civil society, property of a citizen or subject is ownership, subject to the lawful demands of the Sovereign, so contracts must be understood as made in reference to the possible exercise of the rightful authority of the Government, and no obligation of a contract can extend to the defeat of legitimate government authority."

These principles control the decision of the present question. The agreement between the railroad company and the Mottleys must necessarily be regarded as having been made subject to the possibility that, at some future time, Congress might so exert its whole constitutional power in regulating interstate commerce as to render that agreement unenforceable or to impair its value. That the exercise of such power may be hampered or restricted to any extent by contracts previously made between individuals or corporations, is inconceivable. The framers of the Constitution never intended any such state of things to exist.

It is said that if Congress intended by the commerce act to embrace such a case as this, then the act is repugnant to the Constitution. Does the act infringe upon the constitutional liberty of the citizen to make contracts? Manifestly not. In the Addyston Pipe case (p. 228) above cited, the court said: "We do not assent to the

correctness of the proposition that the constitutional guaranty of liberty to the individual to enter into private contracts limits the power of Congress and prevents it from legislating upon the subject of contracts," relating to interstate commerce. Again: "But it has never been, and in our opinion ought not to be, held that the word [liberty] included the right of an individual to enter into private contracts upon all subjects, no matter what their nature and wholly irrespective (among other things) of the fact that they would, if performed, result in the regulation of interstate commerce, and in the violation of an act of Congress upon that subject. The provision in the Constitution does not, as we believe, exclude Congress from legislating with regard to contracts of the above nature, while in the exercise of its constitutional right to regulate commerce among the States. Anything which directly obstructs and thus regulates that commerce which is carried on among the States, whether it is state legislation or private contracts between individuals or corporations, should be subject to the power of Congress in the regulation of that commerce."

These authorities and principles condemn the proposition that the defendants in error had the constitutional right, pursuant to or because of the agreement of 1871 and during their respective lives, to accept and use free transportation for themselves, as passengers, on an interstate train, after Congress forbade, under penalty any interstate carrier to demand, collect or receive compensation for transportation, or any interstate passenger, not within the classes excepted by the act, to use transportation tickets, except upon the basis fixed by the carrier's published schedule of rates. After the commerce act came into effect no contract that was inconsistent with the regulations established by the act of Congress could be enforced in any court. The rule upon this subject is thoroughly established.