The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1892-04-28
AUTONOMY OF STATEHOOD.

THE HERALD was the first paper in the
country TO call attention to the Importance
Of the late decision of the supreme court of
the United States in the case of O'NEIL
against the state of Vermont involving the
right of every state to form oand regulate
its own institutions. The centralizing
tendency Of the opinions of the minority of
the court, Justices FIELD, HARLAN and
BREWER, is now the topic of editorial com
ment by the New York Herald and other
eastern journals, and the subject is the
occasion Of much discussion at the national
capital
The case, as our readers will recall, in
wolves the right to purchase and forward
goods to be paid for on delivery to the
buyer in another state, such goods being
contraband of law in the state where de-
| livered The court properly upheld the
complete right OF the state to prohibit the
introduction of such articles as it might
choose to, for any reason sufficient to it
self. The dissenting judges maintain that
by the 14th amendment the rights of per-
son in one state must be guaranteed in an
other. But the fellacy of this doctrine is
that the amendment applies only to the
condition Of things following the abolition
of slavery.
The question involved has been before
the supreme court of the United States in
! several forms within the last two years,
and there have been varying decisions-all
in relation 10 state prohibition of the sale
Of liquor. The decision of the
Kansas case in October, 1890, held
that there never was q prohi5itory
law in the state What was enacted and
for time enforced as law was unconsu-
tutional and void. Congress then passed
the WILSON law giving the states plenary
power over spirits shipped into them. But
as Congress cannot make q prohibitory law
for Kansas or any other state, the whole
"original PACKAGE question was wide open
again. The Iowa decision, about the same
time, WIS similar.
The idea that state cannot regulate It's
own internal affairs without the consent o.
Congress is a repulsive one in a Democratic
country, and even Senator EDMUNDs de
clared that people of the states should have
charge of the preservation of their owl
autonomy, whether it relates to traffic il
drugs, dynamite or Intoxicating liquors
We reoollect that the Senator predicted
then that the supreme court would review
and amend the action it took in the origina
package question.
Another interesting decision was in TIT
case of a keeper of a dsorderly saloon il
San Francisco, who having been refused
renewal of his license by the police com
I J.
out one. He was arrested and appealed I
the United States circuit court which dis
charged him on the ground that the lav
, was unconstitutional, because it gave L
) certain persons the licensing power. Tn
supreme court upheld the commissioners
declaring that the welfare and morality O
society are peculiarly involved in the bust
ness of retailing liquor to sue
, an extent that it may be pre-
hibited entirely. A citizen has no naturs
right to sell liquor by retail; it is not
privilege of citizenship; it is business 6
the discretion of the legislatures; and the
; may commit the granting of licenses I
police commissioners, or forbid it alt
gether. 1t struck students of judicial dc
examinations as somewhat strange that til
: court should have decided that legislature
lose their authority entirely when tt
4 liquor comes in from another state to
h sold in original packages. And it is parti
ularly desirable, and indeed important thl
the points laid down in the recent Vernon
case should remain as the permanent s
preme law of the land on the subject of Il
complete control by a state of its donest
= concerns and police regulations.