Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar

“ The demands of such a supervision would require, not uniform legislation generally applicable throughout the United States, but a swarm of statutes only locally applicable, and utterly inconsistent. Any movement towards the establishment of rules of production in this vast country, with its many different climates and opportunities, could only be at the sacrifice of the peculiar advantages of a large part of the localities in it, if not of every one of them. ”

“ The result would be that congress would be invested, to the exclusion of the states, with the power to regulate, not only manufacture, but also agriculture, horticulture, stock-raising, domestic fisheries, mining,-in short, every branch of human industry. ”

“ The power to authorize a business within a state is plainly repugnant to the exclusive power of the state over the same subject.' The manufacture of intoxicating liquors in a state is none the less business within that state because the manufacturer intends, at his convenience, to export such liquors to foreign countries or to other states. This court has already decided that the fact that an article was manufactured for export to another state does not of itself make it an article of interstate commerce within the meaning of section 8, art. ”

“ To support the affirmative, the plaintiff in error maintains that alcohol is, in itself, a useful commodity, not necessarily noxious, and is a subject of property; that the very statute under consideration, by various provisions, and especially by those which permit, in express terms, the manufacture of intoxicating liquors for mechanical, medicinal, culinary, or sacramental purposes, recognizes those qualities, and expressly authorizes the manufacture ”

“ But it does not follow that, because the products of a domestic manufacture may ultimately become the subjects of interstate commerce, at the pleasure of the manufacturer, the legislation of the state respecting such manufacture is an attempted exercise of the power to regulate commerce exclusively conferred upon congress. ”

“ When the products of the farm or the forest are collected and brought in from the surrounding country to a town or station serving as an entrepot for that particular region, whether on a river or a line of railroad, such products are not yet exports, nor or they in process of exportation, nor is exportation begun until they are committed to the common carrier for transportation out of the state to the state of their destination, or have started on their ultimate passage to that state. ”

“ These questions are well answered in the language of the court in the License Tax Cases, 5 Wall. 470: 'Over this commerce and trade [the internal commerce and domestic trade of the states] congress has no power of regulation, nor any direct control. This power belongs exclusively to the states. No interference by congress with the business of citizens transacted within a state is warranted by the constitution, except such as is strictly incidental to the exercise of powers clearly granted to the legislature. ”

“ The sale is forbidden, the manufacture is forbidden, and each is forbidden independently of the order. Such being the case on the subject of the lawfulness or unlawfulness of the manufacture, (which is the point before the court,) it is useless to argue as to the conditions under which it is permissible to hold intoxicating liquors in possession, or to sell them. ”

“ The police power of a state is as broad and plenary as its taxing power, and property within the state is subject to the operations of the former so long as it is within the regulating restrictions of the later. The judgment of the supreme court of Iowa is affirmed. ”

“ According to the theory of that great opinion, the supreme authority in this country is divided between the government of the United States, whose action extends over the whole Union, but which possesses only certain powers enumerated in its written constitution, and the separate governments of the several states, which ratain all powers not delegated to the Union. ”