Samuel Freeman Miller

“ Nor can it be doubted that a tax which so seriously affects the interchange of commodities between the States as to essentially impede or seriously interfere with it, is a regulation of commerce. And it is also true, as conceded in that opinion, that Congress has the same right to regulate commerce among the States that it has to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and that whenever it exercises that power, all conflicting State laws must give way, and that if Congress had made any rugulation covering the matter in question we need inquire no further. ”

“ But, assuming the tax to be, as we have supposed, a discriminating tax, levied exclusively upon the products of sister States; and looking to the consequences which the exercise of this power may produce if it be once conceded, amounting, as we have seen, to a total abolition of all commercial intercourse between the States, under the cloak of the taxing power, we are not prepared to admit that a State can exercise such a power, though Congress may have failed to act on the subject in any manner whatever. ”

“ It is obvious that the right to impose any such discriminating tax, if it exist at all, cannot be limited in amount, and that a tax under the same authority can as readily be laid which would amount to an absolute prohibition to sell liquors introduced from without while the privilege would remain unobstructed in regard to articles made in the State. ”