Melville Fuller

“ The Lehigh Valley Railroad Company has no railroad of its own reaching the city of Philadelphia, but transports coal and other merchandise, and sometimes passengers, from Mauch Chunk and other points in Pennsylvania over its own line to Phillipsburg, in the state of New Jersey, from which point it is carried upon the Belvidere and Delaware Railroad to Trenton, and thence by the Pennsylvania Railroad lines to the city of Philadelphia. ”

“ This is no more than an expansion of its simplest signification, that of an exchange of goods, the bringing of them from the seller to the buyer, however vast the range now comprehended by the term in the progress of society. ”

“ Louis Railway Company is a corporation created under the laws of Tennessee, and through freight and passengers transported from Nashville to Chattanooga pass over a few miles in Alabama, and perhaps two miles in Georgia, but we had not supposed that that circumstance would render the taxation of that company, in respect of such business, by the state of Tennessee, invalid. ”

“ The receipts named in class 2 are confined to that part of the transportation from Mauch Chunk to Phillipsburg, and the taxation to the mileage wholly within the state of Pennsylvania; and the question is whether this taxation in respect of such receipts from freight and passengers carried by continuous transportation to Philadelphia from Mauch Chunk by way of Trenton, N. J., amounts to a regulation of interstate commerce. ”

“ But, as was said by Chief Justice MARSHALL, the words of the grant do not embrace that commerce which is completely internal, which is carried on between man and man in a state, or between different parts of the same state, and which does not extend to nor affect other states. 'Commerce,' observed the chief justice, 'undoubtedly is traffic ”