The Bennington banner. [volume] (Bennington, Vt.) 1858-1894, 1890-05-08
A FAR-REAoHINe DECISION.


The United States Supreme Court on
Monday rendered decision which vir-
tually says that citizen of another State .
may import liquors into a Prohibition /.
State, and, without license, into a .
license State, and sell the same in orig !
inal packages, This appears to be in ac- |
cordance with the letter rather than with |
the spirit of the laws giving federal con-
troll to interstate commerce. The Opin- !
ion is by Chief Justice Fuller. Among |
other things it says
whenever the law of the State |
amounts essentially to a regulation of
commerce with foreign Nations or among
the States, as it does when it inhahits,
directly or indirectly, the receipt of an
imported commodity, or its disposition
before it has ceased to become an article
of trade between one State and another,
or another country and this, it comes in
conflict with power which, in this par
ticular, has been exclusively vested in
the original government, and is therefore
void. The plaintiff, citizens of Illinois,
had the right to import their beer into
Iowa and had the right to sell it, by
which act alone it became mingled in the
common mass of property within the
State. Up to that point, in the absence
of Congressional permission to do so, the
State had no power to interfere, by seiz-
ure or any other action, in prohibition of
importation and sale by the nonresident
importer. Articles which Congress
recognizes as subjects of interstate com
merce may be controlled by State laws
Amounting to regulations, while they re-
tain that character, but to concede to a
State the power to exclude such articles
without Congressional permission is to
cOncede to majority of the people of
State, represented in the State Legisla-
ture, the power to regulate commercial
intercourse between the States"
This means nothing else than that
neither prohibition nor license can pre-
vent an outsider from freely selling in
prohibition or license states all kinds of
liquors so long as they are kept in the
original package, whether the packages
are barrels, kegs, jugs or pocket TASKS.
If this is the law all our liquor dealers
will speedily become non-residents and
go into the business of importing ''origi-
nal packages" ranging in size from bar
rels to those containing en-cent drinks.
1t puts an end to anything like state con-
troll of liquor sales and enables the
liquor dealers to defy all local attempts
at regulation of their traffic.
The decision was written by Chief JUS
tee Fuller, but it was not approved by
the full bench, Justice Gray delivering a
dissenting opinion in behalf of Justices
Harlan and Brewer and himself. This
opinion says that ''the power of regulat-
ing or prohibiting the manufacturing
and sale of Intoxicating liquors appro-
lpriately belongs, as branch of the pO-
lice power, to the legislatures of the sew
L., .Na hA II n,A nd
effectively exercised by them alone, ac-
cording to the views of the public policy
and local needs, and cannot practically,
if it can constitutionally, be welded by
congress as part of national and uni
form SYSTEM" 1t adds:
''If the statutes of the state, restrict
ing or prohibiting the sale of intoxicat-
ing liquors within its territory, are to be
held imperative and void as applied to
liquors sent or brought into another
state and sold by the importers in what
are called original packages, the conse-
quence must-be that an inhabitant of any
, state may, under the pretext of inter
state-commerce, and without license OIL
supervision of public authority, carry OF
send into and sell i'll any or all of the
other states of the Union, Intoxicating
liquors of whatever description, in cases
or. kegs, or even in single bottles OIL
TASKS, despite any legislation of those
states on the subject, and although his
own state should be the only one which
had not enacted similar laws. We would
require affirmative and explicit legisla.
ton on the part of congress to convince
: us that it contemplated or intended such
a result"
This appears to be the only just and
practical view of the case. The right to
import liquors into state is very prop
erly controlled by the general govern
ment, but the right to sell them after
they are imported would appear to be
best regulated by the state itself.
1t may be that the decision is un
fortunately worded and that it does not
accurately express the ideas it is intend
ed to convey. In that case it should be
revised without delay.-TrOy Times
: april Both.