it can scarcely, at this day, be open to doubt that every subject falling within the legitimate sphere of commercial regulation may be partially or wholly excluded, when either measure shall be demanded by the safety or by the important interests of the entire nation. Such exclusion cannot be limited to particular classes or descriptions of commercial subjects; it may embrace manufactures, bullion, coin, or any other thing. The power once conceded, it may operate on any and every subject of commerce to which the legislative discretion. may apply it.

But the twentieth section of the act of Congress of March 3, 1825, or rather those provisions of that section brought to the view of this court by the second question certified, are not properly referable to commercial regulations, merely as such; nor to considerations of ordinary commercial advantage. They appertain rather to the execution of an important trust invested by the Constitution, and to the obligation to fulfil that trust on the part of the government, namely, the trust and the duty of creating and maintaining a uniform and pure metallic standard of value throughout the Union. The power of coining money and of regulating its value was delegated to Congress by the Constitution for the very purpose, as assigned by the framers of that instrument, of creating and preserving the uniformity and purity of such a standard of value; and on account of the impossibility which was foreseen of otherwise preventing the inequalities and the confusion necessarily incident to different views of policy, which in different communities would be brought to bear on this subject. The power to coin money being thus given to Congress, founded on public necessity, it must carry with it the correlative power of protecting the creature and object of that power. It cannot be imputed to wise and practical statesmen, nor is it consistent with common sense, that they should have vested this high and exclusive authority, and with a view to objects partaking of the magnitude of the authority itself, only to be rendered immediately vain and useless, as must have been the case had the government been left disabled and impotent as to the only means of securing the objects in contemplation.

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If the medium which the government was authorized to create and establish could immediately be expelled, and substituted by one it had neither created, estimated, nor authorized, one possessing no intrinsic value, then the power conferred by the Constitution would be useless, wholly fruitless of every end it was designed to accomplish. Whatever functions Congress are, by the Constitution, authorized to perform, they are, when the public good requires it, bound to perform; and on this principle, having emitted a circulating medium, a standard of value indispensable for the purposes of the community, and for the action of the government itself, they are accordingly authorized and bound in duty to prevent its debasement and expulsion, and the destruction of the general confidence and

convenience, by the influx and substitution of a spurious coin in lieu of the constitutional currency. We admit that the clause of the Constitution authorizing Congress to provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States does not embrace within its language the offence of uttering or circulating spurious or counterfeited coin (the term " counterfeit," both by its etymology and common intendment, signifying the fabrication of a false image or representation); nor do we think it necessary or regular to seek the foundation of the offence of circulating spurious coin, or for the origin of the right to punish that offence, either in the section of the statute before quoted, or in this clause of the Constitution. We trace both the offence and the authority to punish it to the power given by the Constitution to coin money, and to the correspondent and necessary power and obligation to protect and to preserve in its purity this constitutional currency for the benefit of the nation. Whilst we hold it a sound maxim that no powers should be conceded to the Federal government which cannot be regularly and legitimately found in the charter of its creation, we acknowledge equally the obligation to withhold from it no power or attribute which, by the same charter, has been declared necessary to the execution of expressly granted powers, and to the fulfilment of clear and well-defined duties.

It has been argued that the doctrines ruled in the case of Fox v. The State of Ohio, 5 How. 410, are in conflict with the positions just stated in the case before us. We can perceive no such conflict, and think that any supposition of the kind must flow from a misapprehension of one or both of these cases. The case of Fox v. The State of Ohio involved no question whatsoever as to the powers of the Federal government to coin money and regulate its value; nor as to the power of that government to punish the offence of importing or circulating spurious coin; nor as to its power to punish for counterfeiting the current coin of the United States. That case was simply a prosecution for a private cheat practised by one citizen of Ohio upon another, within the jurisdiction of the State, by means of a base coin in the similitude of a dollar, — an offence denounced by the law of Ohio as obnoxious to punishment by confinement in the State penitentiary. And the question, and the only one, brought up for the examination of this court was, whether this private cheat could be punished by the State authorities, on account of the immediate instrument of its perpetration having been a base coin, in the similitude of a dollar of the coinage of the United States.

The stress of the argument of this court in that case was to show that the right of the State to punish that cheat had not been taken from her by the express terms, nor by any necessary implication, of the Constitution. It claimed for the State neither the power to coin money nor to regulate the value of coin; but simply that of protecting her citizens against frauds committed upon them within her

jurisdiction, and indeed, as a means auxiliary thereto, of relying upon the true standard of the coin as established and regulated under the authority of Congress. In illustration of the existence of the right just mentioned in the State, and in order merely to show that it had not been taken from her, it was said that the punishment of such a cheat did not fall within the express language of those clauses of the Constitution which gave to Congress the right of coining money and of regulating its value, or of providing for the punishment of counterfeiting the current coin. It was also said by this court, that the fact of passing or putting off a base coin did not fall within the language of those clauses of the Constitution; for this fact fabricated, altered, or changed nothing, but left the coins, whether genuine or spurious, precisely as before. But this court have nowhere said that an offence cannot be committed against the coin or currency of the United States, or against that constitutional power which is exclusively authorized for public uses to create that currency, and which for the same public uses and necessities is authorized and bound to preserve it; nor have they said that the debasement of the coin would not be as effectually accomplished by introducing and throwing into circulation a currency which was spurious and similated, as it would be by actually making counterfeits, fabricating coin of inferior or base metal. On the contrary, we think that either of these proceedings would be equally in contravention of the right and of the obligation appertaining to the government to coin money, and to protect and preserve it at the regulated or standard rate of value.

With a view of avoiding conflict between the State and Federal jurisdictions, this court, in the case of Fox v. The State of Ohio, have taken care to point out that the same act might, as to its character and tendencies, and the consequences it involved, constitute an offence against both the State and Federal governments, and might draw to its commission the penalties denounced by either, as appropriate to its character in reference to each. We think this distinction sound, as we hold to be the entire doctrines laid down in the case above mentioned, and regard them as being in nowise in conflict with the conclusions adopted in the present case.

We therefore order it to be certified to the Circuit Court of the United States for the Northern District of New York, in answer to the questions propounded by that court:

1. That Congress had power and authority, under the Constitution, to enact so much of the twentieth section of the act of March 3, 1825, entitled "An Act more effectually to provide for the punishment of certain crimes against the United States, and for other purposes," as relates to bringing into the United States counterfeit coins.

2. That Congress, under and by virtue of the Constitution, had power to enact so much of the said twentieth section as relates to the uttering, publishing, passing, and selling of the counterfeit coin therein specified.

SECTION IX.- POST-OFFICES AND POST-ROADS.

IN RE RAPIER.

143 United States, 110. 1892.

[RAPIER and others were arrested under indictments in Federal courts charged with violation of provisions of the United States statutes making it criminal to deposit or cause to be deposited in the mails any letter, postal card, or circular concerning any lottery, or any newspaper containing any advertisement of any lottery.]

MR. CHIEF JUSTICE FULLER delivered the opinion of the court.

These are applications for discharge by writ of habeas corpus from arrest for alleged violations of an act of Congress, approved September 19, 1890, entitled "An Act to amend certain sections of the Revised Statutes relating to lotteries, and for other purposes." 26 Stat. 465.

The question for determination relates to the constitutionality of section 3894 of the Revised Statutes as amended by that act. In Ex parte Jackson, 96 U. S. 727, it was held that the power vested in Congress to establish post-offices and post-roads embraced the regulation of the entire postal system of the country, and that under it Congress may designate what may be carried in the mail and what excluded; that in excluding various articles from the mails the object of Congress is not to interfere with the freedom of the press or with any other rights of the people, but to refuse the facilities for the distribution of matter deemed injurious by Congress to the public morals; and that the transportation in any other way of matters excluded from the mails would not be forbidden. Unless we are prepared to overrule that decision, it is decisive of the question before us.

It is argued that in Jackson's case it was not urged that Congress had no power to exclude lottery matter from the mails; but it is conceded that the point of want of power was passed upon in the opinion. This was necessarily so, for the real question was the existence of the power and not the defective exercise of it. And it is a mistake to suppose that the conclusion there expressed was not arrived at without deliberate consideration. It is insisted that the express powers of Congress are limited in their exercise to the objects for which they were intrusted, and that in order to justify Congress in exercising any incidental or implied powers to carry into effect its express authority, it must appear that there is some relation between the means employed and the legitimate end. This

is true, but while the legitimate end of the exercise of the power in question is to furnish mail facilities for the people of the United States, it is also true that mail facilities are not required to be furnished for every purpose.

The States before the Union was formed could establish postoffices and post-roads, and in doing so could bring into play the police power in the protection of their citizens from the use of the means so provided for purposes supposed to exert a demoralizing influence upon the people. When the power to establish postoffices and post-roads was surrendered to the Congress it was as a complete power, and the grant carried with it the right to exercise all the powers which made that power effective. It is not necessary that Congress should have the power to deal with crime or immorality within the States in order to maintain that it possesses the power to forbid the use of the mails in aid of the perpetration of crime or immorality.

The argument that there is a distinction between mala prohibita and mala in se, and that Congress might forbid the use of the mails in promotion of such acts as are universally regarded as mala in se, including all such crimes as murder, arson, burglary, &c., and the offence of circulating obscene books and papers, but cannot do so in respect of other matters which it might regard as criminal or immoral, but which it has no power itself to prohibit, involves a concession which is fatal to the contention of petitioners, since it would be for Congress to determine what are within and what without the rule; but we think there is no room for such a distinction here, and that it must be left to Congress in the exercise of a sound discretion to determine in what manner it will exercise the power it undoubtedly possesses.

We cannot regard the right to operate a lottery as a fundamental right infringed by the legislation in question; nor are we able to see that Congress can be held, in its enactment, to have abridged the freedom of the press. The circulation of newspapers is not prohibited, but the government declines itself to become an agent in the circulation of printed matter which it regards as injurious to the people. The freedom of communication is not abridged within the intent and meaning of the constitutional provision unless Congress is absolutely destitute of any discretion as to what shall or shall not be carried in the mails, and compelled arbitrarily to assist in the dissemination of matters condemned by its judgment, through the governmental agencies which it controls. That power may be abused furnishes no ground for a denial of its existence, if government is to be maintained at all.

In short, we do not find sufficient grounds in the arguments of counsel, able and exhaustive as they have been, to induce us to change the views already expressed in the case to which we have referred. We adhere to the conclusion therein announced.