The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1868-08-04


nations and parts of nations in all its branches,
ard is regulated by prescribing rules for car
rying ON that intercourse" In a subsequent
case the same great judge shows that COM
merce includes traffic as well as mere inter
course. In the celebrated Passenger Cases"
(lS49) the Supreme Court formally decided
that persons may be the objects of commerce,
and that the transportation of persons is
branch of commercial intercourse which may
be regulated by Congress. State laws inter-
fering with the national regulations were pro-
nounced void. These principles lie at the
basis of all the legislation of Congress, and of
all the judgments of the Supreme Court, aud
have become part Of the established consti-
tutional law of the country.
Commerce, therefore, contains two elements,
and traffic. each of these may
be regulated, If they are carried on with for
eign nations, or between two or more States.
We are so geographically situated that by far
the greater part of our commercial intercourse
with foreign countries is conducted upon the
ocean; and thus it necessarily happens that
most of the laws regulating that intercourse
are made applicable to water transportation.
For a considerable period of our history most
of our lnter-stst commerce was also trans
acted upon navigable waters, partly upon the
ocean, partly upon the great chain of lakes
which skirt the northern frontier, and
partly upon the vast rivers which divide
and separate many of the States and
it happens that most of the regulations
which affect this intercourse have
reference to navigation or to navigable waters.
Congress has, by virtue of its general func-
tioD, prescribed rules governing all this navi-
CATION as special and minute, and interfering
as radically with State legislation, as any
which can ever be demanded and enacted for
the government of land transportation and
traffic. In this class are found regulations for
the ownership, transfer, and use of vessels
sailing upon foreign voyages or from one State
to another. Other statutes regulate the use
and conduct of the vessels themselves, provide
for the safety of crews and passengers by pre-
scribing rules concerning boilers, engines,
medicines, bulk, ventilation, number of the
crew, the form and nature of their contract
of hiring, their rights, powers, and duties.
No one questions the validity of such laws
as these. Not steamer sails from New York
to an adjacent port which is not under the
control of United States statutes; not one
plies on the great lakes, the Ohio
or the Mississippi, which is not in like manner
the object of national legislation. Many of
these vessels are owned by corporations created
under State authority, which are thus inter-
tered with in the same manner as railway COM
panies would be if the measure under discus
sion should be adopted. But Congress has
gone much further in its work of regulation.
1t has invaded the common law of the States
and has relieved the owners of vessels from
much of the liability as carriers of goods which
that law casts upon them. The Supreme
Court has sustained the statute which makes
this change, and has declared that it applies
to the great lakes and navigable rivers as we'll
as to the ocean. Again, Congress has assumed :
to authorize the construction of certain bridges
over great rivers which run between several
States. The Supreme Court, in the case of
Pennsylvania VS.. Bridge Company, 18 How
ards Rep, has directly sustained this exercise
of power. In the very late case of Gilman VS..
Philadelphia it was conceded by the same tri-
bunal that the national legislature may, by
general or by special laws, provide for the
erection OF bridges over streams navigable
from the ocean, whether lying entirely within
single State or not.
These examples Of the existing system of
regulation might be indefinitely multiplied.
But enough has been said to show that the
principles upon which the whole question of
power turns have been settled; that commerce
includes transit as we'll as traffic; that inter
state commerce is as much within the scope of
the Congressional function as that which is
foreign; and that the national legislature has,
to a large extent, exercised its authority over
the intercourse among the States carried on
in the natural water channels of intercom-
munication. The whole discussion is, there
FORE reduced to one narrow point. Unless in
ways now in use, is not commerce, Congress
has ample authority to prescribe rules govern
ing the Interstate transportation of persons
and merchandise by railways.
1t hardly needs an argument to show that
the methods and instruments of the inter-
course-bridge or river, stage coach or pack
mule or railroad are not the essential facts;
these change; new inventions Danish the OBJ
jects which were once familiar and TO which
the laws once applied, and the laws must be
amended in order to adapt themselves to the
altered circumstances. The Constitution con-
Germs itself only with the fact that persons
and merchandise are transported from foreign
countries to our own, or from one State to an
other and not with the particular methods
which may be in use from time to time to
effect this transit. The Supreme Court very
properly said in Gilman VS.. Philadelphia
"It must not be forgotten that bridges, which
are connecting parts of turnpikes, streets, and
railroads, are means of commercial transpor-
tation as well as navigable rivers, and that
the commerce which passes over a bridge may
be much greater than would ever be trans
ported on the water which it obstructs."
One consideration, however, is absolutely
conc cusive upon this point. If the power of
Congress extends only to that interstate
transit which is carried on through the natu-
raj water channels, and does not also embrace
that carried on through the means OF railways
and other artificial channels, then the same is
true as to its power ever foreign commerce.
Those who deny the authority of Congress to
regulate the railway traffic through the States
must of necessity, deny its power to regulate
the railway or other land traffic with Canada or
with Mexico. In fact, the opponents Of the
proposed measure are driven to the position
that the Constitution was only framed for the
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