Edward Douglass White

“ In the first place we are of opinion that the distinction upon which the classification in the statute rests between a manufacturer selling goods by him made at their place of manufacture and one engaged as a merchant in whole or in part in selling goods of his manufacture at a place of business other than where they were made is so obvious as to require nothing but a mere statement of the two classes. ”

“ It follows therefore that if the asserted disadvantage be real and not imaginary, it would be one not direct because not arising from the operation and effect of the statute, but indirect as a mere consequence of the situation of the persons and property affected and of the nondiscriminating exercise by the state of power which it had a right to exert without violating the Constitution-which is indeed but to say that the disadvantage relied upon, if any, is but the indirect result of our dual system of government. ”

“ But, it is urged, the statute should be held to be a burden on interstate commerce and repugnant to the Constitution because of the disadvantage to which, it is insisted, it necessarily by way of a license tax subjected goods manufactured in another state when sold in Virginia by a merchant manufacturing the same, while no such tax was by the statute imposed on a manufacturer in Virginia selling his goods so manufactured at the place of their manufacture. ”