They are not to be lightly treated, nor are we authorized to make any advances to meet them until we are required to do so by the duties of our position.

In the case before us, the Supreme Court of Iowa, whose judgment we are called on to review, did not consider it. They said that the record did not present it.

It is true the bill of exceptions, as it seems to us, does show that the defendant's plea was all the evidence given, but this does not remove the difficulty in our minds. The plea states that the defendant was the owner of the glass of liquor sold prior to the passage of the law under which the proceedings against him were instituted, being chapter sixtyfour of the revision of 1860.

If this is to be treated as an allegation that the defendant was the owner of that glass of liquor prior to 1860, it is insufficient, because the revision of the laws of Iowa of 1860 was not an enactment of new laws, but a revision of those previously enacted; and there has been in existence in the State of Iowa, ever since the code of 1851, a law strictly prohibiting the sale of such liquors; the Act in all essential particulars under which the defendant was prosecuted, amended in some immaterial points. If it is supposed that the averment is helped by the statement that he owned the liquor before the law was passed, the answer is that this is a mere conclusion of law. He should have stated when he became the owner of the liquor, or at least have fixed a date when he did own it, and leave the court to decide when the law took effect, and apply it to his case. But the plea itself is merely argumentative, and does not state the ownership as a fact, but says he is not guilty of any offence, because of such fact.

If it be said that this manner of looking at the case is narrow and technical, we answer that the record affords to us on its face the strongest reason to believe that it has been prepared from the beginning, for the purpose of obtaining the opinion of this court on important constitutional questions without the actual existence of the facts on which such questions can alone arise.

It is absurd to suppose that the plaintiff, an ordinary retailer of drinks, could have proved, if required, that he had owned that particular glass of whiskey prior to the prohibitory liquor law of 1851.

The defendant, from his first appearance before the justice of the peace to his final argument in the Supreme Court, asserted in the record in various forms that the statute under which he was prosecuted was a violation of the Constitution of the United States. The act of the prosecuting attorney, under these circumstances, in going to trial without any replication or denial of the plea, which was intended manifestly to raise that question, but which carried on its face the strongest probability of its falsehood, satisfies us that a moot case was deliberately made up to raise the particular point when the real facts of the case would not have done so. As the Supreme Court of Iowa did not consider this question as raised by the record, and passed no opinion

on it, we do not feel at liberty, under all the circumstances, to pass on it on this record.

The other errors assigned being found not to exist, the judgment of the Supreme Court of Iowa is affirmed.

[JUSTICES BRADLEY and FIELD read concurring opinions, restating the views of the minority in the Slaughter-House Cases. The former, speaking for himself and JUSTICES FIELD and SWAYNE, said: . . . “By that portion of the Fourteenth Amendment by which no State may make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, or take life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, it has now become the fundamental law of this country that life, liberty, and property (which include the pursuit of happiness') are sacred rights, which the Constitution of the United States guarantees to its humblest citizen against oppressive legislation, whether national or local, so that he cannot be deprived of them without due process of law. The monopoly created by the Legislature of Louisiana, which was under consideration in the Slaughter-House Cases, was, in my judgment, legislation of this sort and obnoxious to this objection. But police regulations, intended for the preservation of the public health and the public order, are of an entirely different charSo much of the Louisiana law as partook of this character was never objected to. It was the unconscionable monopoly, of which the police regulation was a mere pretext, that was deemed by the dissenting members of the court an invasion of the right of the citizen to pursue his lawful calling. A claim of right to pursue an unlawful calling stands on very different grounds, occupying the same platform as does a claim of right to disregard license laws and to usurp public franchises. It is greatly to be regretted, as it seems to me, that this distinction was lost sight of (as I think it was) in the decision of the court referred to."

acter.

MR. JUSTICE FIELD said: .. "No one has ever pretended, that I am aware of, that the Fourteenth Amendment interferes in any respect with the police power of the State. . . . It was because the Act of Louisiana transcended the limits of police regulation, and asserted a power in the State to farm out the ordinary avocations of life, that dissent was made to the judgment of the court sustaining the validity of the Act."]

- ED.

1 See Pomeroy's Constitutional Law (Bennett's ed.) s. 256 e.—

BUTCHERS' UNION SLAUGHTER-HOUSE, &c., COMPANY v. CRESCENT CITY, &c., SLAUGHTER-HOUSE COMPANY. SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES. 1883.

[111 U. S. 746.]

IN 1869, the Legislature of Louisiana granted the appellee exclusive privileges for stock-landing and slaughter-houses, at New Orleans for twenty-five years, which were sustained by this court in the SlaughterHouse Cases, 16 Wall. 36. In 1881, under a provision of the State Constitution of 1879, the municipal authorities granted privileges for slaughter-houses and stock-landing at New Orleans to the appellants. The appellee as plaintiff below filed its bill in the Circuit Court to restrain the appellants from exercising the privileges thus conferred. A preliminary injunction was granted, which, on hearing, was made perpetual. From this decree the defendants below appealed. The legislation and other facts bearing upon the issues are stated in the opinion of the court.

Mr. B. R. Forman, for appellant.

Mr. Thomas J. Semmes, for appellee.

MR. JUSTICE MILLER delivered the opinion of the court.

This is an appeal from the Circuit Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.

The appellee brought a suit in the Circuit Court to obtain an injunction against the appellant forbidding the latter from exercising the business of butchering, or receiving and landing live-stock intended for butchering, within certain limits in the parishes of Orleans, Jefferson, and St. Bernard, and obtained such injunction by a final decree in that

court.

The ground on which this suit was brought and sustained is that the plaintiffs had the exclusive right to have all such stock landed at their stock-landing place, and butchered at their slaughter-house, by virtue of an Act of the General Assembly of Louisiana, approved March 8th, 1869, entitled, "An Act to protect the health of the City of New Orleans, to locate the stock-landing and slaughter-houses, and to incorporate the Crescent City Live-Stock Landing and Slaughter-House Company."

An examination of that statute, especially of its fourth and fifth sections, leaves no doubt that it did grant such an exclusive right.

The fact that it did so, and that this was conceded, was the basis of the contest in this court in the Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wall. 36, in which the law was assailed as a monopoly forbidden by the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, and these amendments as well as the Fifteenth, came for the first time before this court for construction. The constitutional power of the State to enact the statute was upheld by this court.

This power was placed by the court in that case expressly on the ground that it was the exercise of the police power which had remained with the States in the formation of the original Constitution of the United States, and had not been taken away by the amendments adopted since.

Citing the definition of this power from Chancellor Kent, it declares that the statute in question came within it. "Unwholesome trades, slaughter-houses, operations offensive to the senses, the deposit of powder, the application of steam-power to propel cars, the building with combustible materials, and the burial of the dead, may all" (he says) "be interdicted by law in the midst of dense masses of population, on the general and rational principle that every person ought so to use his property as not to injure his neighbors; and that private interests must be made subservient to the general interest of the community." 2 Kent's Commentaries, 340; 16 Wall. 62. In this latter case it was added that "the regulation of the place and manner of conducting the slaughtering of animals, and the business of butchering within a city, and the inspection of the animals to be killed for meat, and of the meat afterwards, are among the most necessary and frequent exercises of this power."

But in the year 1879 the State of Louisiana adopted a new Constitution, in which were the following articles:

"Article 248. The police juries of the several parishes, and the constituted authorities of all incorporated municipalities of the State, shall alone have the power of regulating the slaughtering of cattle and other live-stock within their respective limits; provided no monopoly or exclusive privilege shall exist in this State, nor such business be restricted to the land or houses of any individual or corporation; provided the ordinances designating places for slaughtering shall obtain the concurrent approval of the Board of Health or other sanitary organization.

"Article 258. . . . The monopoly features in the charter of any corporation now existing in the State, save such as may be contained in the charters of railroad companies, are hereby abolished."

Under the authority of these articles of the Constitution the municipal authorities of the city of New Orleans enacted ordinances which opened to general competition the right to build slaughter-houses, establish stock-landings, and engage in the business of butchering in that city under regulations established by those ordinances, but which were in utter disregard of the monopoly granted to the Crescent City Company, and which in effect repealed the exclusive grant made to that company by the Act of 1869.

The appellant here, the Butchers' Union Slaughter-House Company, availing themselves of this repeal, entered upon the business, or were about to do so, by establishing their slaughter-house and stock-landing within the limits of the grant of the Act of 1869 to the Crescent City Company.

Both these corporations, organized under the laws of Louisiana and

doing business in that State, were citizens of the same State, and could not, in respect of that citizenship, sue each other in a court of the United States.

The Crescent City Company, however, on the allegation that these constitutional provisions of 1879 and the subsequent ordinances of the city, were a violation of their contract with the State under the Act of 1869, brought this suit in the Circuit Court as arising under the Constitution of the United States, art. 1, sec. 10. That court sustained the view of the plaintiff below, and held that the Act of 1869 and the acceptance of it by the Crescent City Company, constituted a contract for the exclusive right mentioned in it for twenty-five years; that it was within the power of the Legislature of Louisiana to make that contract, and as the constitutional provisions of 1879 and the subsequent ordinances of the city impaired its obligation, they were to that extent void.

No one can examine the provisions of the Act of 1869 with the knowledge that they were accepted by the Crescent City Company, and so far acted on that a very large amount of money was expended in a vast slaughter-house, and an equally extensive stock-yard and landing-place, and hesitate to pronounce that in form they have all the elements of a contract on sufficient consideration.

It admits of as little doubt that the ordinance of the city of New Orleans, under the new Constitution, impaired the supposed obligation imposed by those provisions on the State, by taking away the exclusive right of the company granted to it for twenty-five years, which was to the company the most valuable thing supposed to be secured to it by the statutory contract.

We do not think it necessary to spend time in demonstrating either of these propositions. We do not believe they will be controverted.

The appellant, however, insists that, so far as the Act of 1869 partakes of the nature of an irrepealable contract, the legislature exceeded its authority, and it had no power to tie the hands of the legislature in the future from legislating on that subject without being bound by the terms of the statute then enacted. This proposition presents the real

point in the case.

Let us see clearly what it is.

It does not deny the power of that legislature to create a corporation, with power to do the business of landing live-stock and providing a place for slaughtering them in the city. It does not deny the power to locate the place where this shall be done exclusively. It does not deny even the power to give an exclusive right, for the time being, to particu lar persons or to a corporation to provide this stock-landing and to establish this slaughter-house.

But it does deny the power of that legislature to continue this right so that no future legislature nor even the same body can repeal or modify it, or grant similar privileges to others. It concedes that such a law, so long as it remains on the statute-book as the latest expression of the legislative will, is a valid law, and must be obeyed, which is all