. & Eng Cas Hennington v. Georgia opinion, among philosophers, moralists, and statesmen of all nations, as on the necessity of periodical cessation of labor. One day is seven is the rule, founded in experience and sustained by science. * * * The prohibition of secular business on Sunday is advocated on the ground that by it the general welfare is advanced, labor protected, and the moral and physical well-being of society is promoted." So, in Bloom v. Richards, 2 Ohio St. 387, 392, Judge THURMAN, delivering the unanimous judgment of the supreme court of Ohio, said: "We are, then, to regard the statute under consideration as a mere municipal or police regulation, whose validity is neither strengthened nor weakened by the fact that the day of rest it enjoins is the Sabbath day. Wisdom requires that men should refrain from labor at least one day in seven, and the advantages of having the day of rest fixed, and so fixed as to happen at regularly recurring intervals, are too obvious to be overlooked. It was within the constitutional competency of the general assembly to require the cessation of labor, and to name the day of rest.' To the same general effect are many cases: Specht v. Com., 8 Pa. St. 312, 322; Com. v. Has, 122 Mass. 40, 42; Frolickstein v. Mobile, 40 Ala. 725; Ex parte Andrews, 18 Cal. 678, in which the dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice FIELD in Ex parte Newman, 9 Cal. 502, was approved; State v. Railroad, 24 W. Va. 783; Scales v. State, 47 Ark. 476, 482, 1 S. W. 769; State v. Ambs, 20 Mo. 214; Mayor, etc., v. Luick, 12 Lea 499, 515. The same principles were announced by the supreme court of Georgia in the present case. As the contention is that that court erred in not adjudging the statute in question to be unconstitutional, it is appropriate that the grounds upon which it proceeded should fully appear in this opinion. That court, speaking by Chief Justice BLECKLEY, said: "There can be no well-founded doubt of its being a police regulation, considering it merely as ordaining the cessation of ordinary labor and business during one day in every week; for the frequent and total suspension of the toils, care, and strain of mind or muscle incident to pursuing an occupation or common employment, is beneficial to every individual, and incidentally to the community at large, the general public. Leisure is no less essential than labor to the well-being of man. Short intervals of leisure at stated periods reduce wear and tear, Hennington v. Georgia . IV promote health, favor cleanliness, encourage social intercourse, afford opportunity for introspection and retrospection, and tend in a high degree to expand the thoughts and sympathies of people, enlarge their information, and elevate their morals. They learn how to be, and come to realize that being is quite as important as doing. Without frequent leisure, the process of forming character could only be begun. It could never advance or be completed. People would be mere machines of labor or business,—nothing more. If a law which, in essential respects, betters for all the people the conditions, sanitary, social, and individual, under which their daily life is carried on, and which contributes to insure for each, even against his own will, his minimum allowance of leisure, cannot be rightfully classed as a police regulation, it would be difficult to imagine any law that could." That court further said: "With respect to the selection of the particular day in each week which has been set apart by our statute as the rest day of the people, religious views and feelings may have had a controlling influence. We doubt not that they did have; and it is probable that the same views and feelings had a very powerful influence in dictating the policy of setting apart any day whatever as a day of enforced rest. But neither of these considerations is destructive of the police nature and character of the statute. If good and sufficient police reasons underlie it, and substantial police purposes are involved in its provisions, these reasons and purposes constitute its civil and legal justification, whether they were or not the direct and immediate motives which induced its passage, and have for so long a time kept it in force. Courts are not concerned with the mere beliefs and sentiments of legislators, or with the motives which influence them in enacting laws which are within legislative competency. That which is properly made a civil duty by statute is none the less so because it is also a real or supposed religious obligation; nor is the statute vitiated, or in any wise weakened, by the chance, or even the certainty, that, in passing it, the legislative mind was swayed by the religious, rather than by the civil, aspect of the measure. Doubtless it is a religious duty to pay debts, but no one supposes that this is any obstacle to its being exacted as a civil duty. With few exceptions, the same may be said of the whole catalogue of duties specified in the Ten Commandments. Those of them which are purely . & Eng Cas Hennington v. Georgia and exclusively religious in their nature cannot be made civil duties, but all the rest of them may be, in so far as they involve conduct, as distinguished from mere operations of mind or states of the affections. Opinions may differ, and they really do differ, as to whether abstaining from labor on Sunday is a religious duty; but whether it is or is not, it is certain that the legislature of Georgia has prescribed it as a civil duty. The statute can fairly and rationally be treated as a legitimate police regulation, and, thus treated, it is a valid law. There is a wide difference between keeping a day holy as a religious observance, and merely forbearing to labor on that day in one's ordinary vocation or business pursuit. Hennington v. State, 90 Ga. 396-399. Assuming, then, that, both upon principle and authority, the statute of Georgia is, in every substantial sense, a police regulation, established under the general authority possessed by the legislature to provide, by laws, for the well-being of the people, we proceed to consider whether it is in conflict with the constitution of the United States. The defendant contends that the running on the Sabbath day of railroad cars, laden with interstate freight, is committed exclusively to the control and supervision of the national government; and that, although congress has not taken any affirmative action upon the subject, state legislation interrupting, even for a limited time only, interstate commerce, whatever may be its object, and however essential such. legislation may be for the comfort, peace, and safety of the people of the state, is a regulation of interstate commerce forbidden by the constitution of the United States. Is this view of the constitution and of the relations between the states and the general government sustained by the former decisions of this court? Is the admitted general power of a state to provide by legislation for the health, the morals, and the general welfare of its people so fettered that it may not enact any law whatever that relates to or affects in any degee the conduct of commerce among the states? If the people of a state deem it necessary to their peace, comfort, and happiness, to say nothing of the public health and the public morals, that one day in each week be set apart by law as a day when business of all kinds carried on within the limits of that state shall cease, whereby all persons of every race and condition in life may have an opportunity to enjoy absolute Hennington v. Georgia . IV (N. 8) rest and quiet, is that result, so far as interstate freight traffic is concerned, attainable only through an affirmative act of congress giving its assent to such legislation? The argument in behalf of the defendants rests upon the erroneous assumption that the statute of Georgia is such a regulation of interstate commerce as is forbidden by the constitution, without reference to affirmative action by congress, and not merely a statute enacted by the state under its police power, and which, although in some degree affecting interstate commerce, does not go beyond the necessities of the case, and therefore is valid, at least until congress interferes. The distinction here suggested is not new in our jurisprudence. It has been often recognized and enforced by this court. In Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1, 203, 210, this court recognized the possession by each state of a general power of legislation, that "embraces everything within the territory of a state, not surrendered to the general government; all which can be most advantageously exercised by the states themselves." Inspection laws, although having, as the court said in that case, "a remote and considerable influence on commerce,' are yet within the authority of the states to enact, because no direct, general power over the objects of such laws was granted to congress. So, also, quarantine laws of every description, if they have real relation to the objects named in them, are to be referred to the power which the states have to make provision for the health and safety of their people. But neither inspection, quarantine, nor health laws enacted by a state have been adjudged void, by force alone of the constitution; and, in the absence of congressional legislation, simply because they remotely, or even directly, affected or temporarily suspended commerce among the states and with foreign nations. Of course, if the inspection, quarantine, or health laws of a state, passed under its reserved power to provide for the health, comfort, and safety of its people, comes into conflict with an act of congress, passed under its power to regulate interstate and foreign. commerce, such local regulations, to the extent of the conflict, must give way, in order that the supreme law of the land-an act of congress passed in pursuance of the constitution-may have unobstructed operation. The possibility of conflict between state and national enactments, each to be referred to the undoubted powers of the state and the nation, respec R. Cas. Hennington v. Georgia tively, was not overlooked in Gibbons v. Ogden, and Chief Justice MARSHALL said: "The framers of our constitution foresaw this state of things, and provided for it, by declaring the supremacy not only of itself, but of the laws made in pursuance of it. The nullity of any act inconsistent with the constitution is produced by the declaration that the constitution. is the supreme law. The appropriate application of that part of the clause which confers the same supremacy on laws and treaties is to such acts of the state legislatures as do not transcend these powers, but, though enacted in the execution of acknowledged state powers, interfere with or are contrary to the laws of congress, made in pursuance of the constitution, or some treaty made under the authority of the United States. In every such case the act of congress, or the treaty, is supreme; and the law of the state, though enacted in the exercise of powers not controverted, must yield to it." These principles are illustrated in numerous decisions of this court, to some of which it is proper to refer. In Wilson v. Marsh Co., 2 Pet. 245, 251, 252, it appeared that that company claimed the right, under a statute of Delaware, to place a dam across a navigable creek, up which the tide flowed for some distance, and thereby abridge the rights of those accustomed to use the stream. This court, after observing that the construction of the dam would enhance the value of the adjoining land, and probably improve the health of the inhabitants, and that such an abridgment of private rights, unless it came in contact with the constitution. or a law of the United States, was an affair between the government of Delaware and its citizens, of which this court could not take cognizance, said: "The counsel for plaintiffs in error insist that it comes in conflict with the power of the United States to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several states.' If congress had passed any act which bore upon the case, -any act in execution of the power to regulate commerce, the object of which was to control state legislation over those small navigable creeks into which the tide flows, and which abound throughout the lower country of the Middle and Southern states,—we should feel not much difficulty in saying that a state law coming in conflict with such act would be void. But congress has passed no such The repugnancy of the law of Delaware to the constitution is placed entirely on its repugnancy to the power to 4 (N. S.) A. & E. R. Cas.-32 act. |