Stephen Johnson Field

“ Interstate commerce is not confined to the sale of goods which have been fully paid for before they leave the state of export. It embraces also goods the sale of which may not be completed until delivery in the state of import; and the distinction in that respect made by the supreme court of Vermont would destroy half of the interstate commerce of the country. To regulate commerce is to prescribe the rules by which it shall be governed ”

“ The fourteenth amendment declares that no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, and that no state shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. ”

“ It is true that the presumption of law is that the majority of the court are right and that I am wrong, yet, in the face of this presumption, and the positiveness with which the views of the majority are asserted, I cannot yield my convictions the other way, which were never clearer or stronger in any case. ”

“ If requiring such a certificate as a condition for the importation of goods into a state was invalid as a regulation of commerce, much more so must a law be which makes such importation upon a sale, not completed until by a delivery of the goods within the state to which they are transported, a penal offense, subjecting the importer to a criminal prosecution for the importation. The law of Vermont would have afforded no protection to the express company employed to transport the goods in question into that state had it refused to carry them. ”

“ I think the plaintiff in error should be allowed, under the twenty-first rule, to amend his assignment of errors, so as to present this objection for our consideration, or that this court, under that rule, without any additional assignment, should take notice of the error of its own motion; for, if the denial by the court below of the immunity claimed against the cruel and unusual punishment imposed was an error, it was one of the gravest character, leaving the defendant to a life of misery, -one of perpetual imprisonment and hard labor. ”

“ The state may, indeed, make the drinking of one drop of liquor an offense to be punished by imprisonment, but it would be an unheard-of cruelty if it should count the drops in a single glass, and make thereby a thousand offenses, and thus extend the punishment for drinking the single glass of liquor to an imprisonment of almost indefinite duration. ”

“ The act charged as an offense in the state of Vermont was, in my judgment, a lawful transaction in the state of New York. It will, I think, strike many men with surprise to learn that filling an order for the purchase of goods and their transmission from one state by an express carrier, to be paid for on delivery to the buyer in another state, can be turned into a criminal offense of the person filling the order in the state where he was not present. ”

“ I do not pretend that this court should take up questions not arising upon the record, but I do contend that it is competent for the court, when once it has acquired jurisdiction of a case, to see that the life or liberty of the citizen is not wantonly sacrificed because of some imperfect statement of the party's rights. ”

“ I do not believe that any such danger is incurred by them by engaging in this mode of interstate commerce. None of the cases which I have seen (and my examination has been somewhat extended) has sustained any such doctrine. Whether transactions of the character mentioned are to be deemed absolute sales of the goods on the part of the vendor, with a proviso for withholding their delivery until actual payment, so as to preserve a lien for the price, or only as executory contracts of sale, not completed until actual delivery, there is a diversity of opinion. ”

“ It does not alter its character as cruel and unusual that for each distinct offense there is a small punishment, if, when they are brought together, and one punishment for the whole is inflicted, it becomes one of excessive severity. And the cruelty of it, in this case, by the imprisonment at hard labor, is further increased by the offenses being thus made infamous crimes. ”

“ In the vendor had, during the same period of three years, sold every third or fourth day a box of fruit or a package of clothing to the vendees in Vermont, payable on delivery, the transactions would have been of the same character as those under consideration,-those of interstate commerce; and I doubt whether a question on this point would have been raised by any one. The present transactions, in the fact that the articles are liquors, are in no respect different in character. ”

“ Amazement would strike the large class of merchants engaged in transmitting goods in this way from one portion of the country to another if they were told that they thereby rendered themselves liable to the penal statutes of the states to which the goods were sent in compliance with the orders of the purchasers, and might be prosecuted for criminal offenses committed in those states, which they had never visited, and with whose laws they never intended to interfere. ”

“ The necessity of some controlling power to regulate commerce both with foreign nations and among the states was one of the principal causes that led to the calling of the convention which adopted the present constitution. ”

“ But in either view, whether considered as absolute sales or executory contracts of sale, they were, as already stated, transactions of interstate commerce. They were made between citizens of different states, and involved the transportation of the article sold from one state to another. A sale of an article between such citizens, and its transportation from one state to another for delivery to the purchaser, are the essential elements of interstate commerce. ”

“ The inhibition is directed against cruel and unusual punishments, whether inflicted for one or many offenses. A convict is not to be scourged until the flesh fall from his body, and he die under the lash, though he may have committed a hundred offenses, for each of which, separately, a whipping of 20 stripes might be inflicted. ”

“ If the first position be the true one, then Vermont, in attempting to punish the defendant, assumed to punish him for an exterritorial offense by her statute, or to apply her statute to an offense not embraced by its terms. ”

“ This was more than 79 years for selling, furnishing, and giving away, as alleged, intoxicating liquor, which took place in New York, to be delivered in Vermont. An appeal having been taken from that judgment to the county court of Rutland county, a jury was called, and the accused pleaded 'Not guilty,' and, although but one charge was specified, and that defectively, in the complaint, which was the one filed before the justice of the peace, the jurors found him guilty of 307 distince offenses of selling intoxicating liquors without authority and contrary to the laws of Vermont. ”

“ It is not, therefore, matter of surprise that the grant should be as extensive as the mischief, and should comprehend all foreign commerce and all commerce among the states. To construe the power so as to impair its efficacy would tend to defeat an object, in the attainment of which the American public took, and justly took, that strong interest which arose from a full conviction of its necessity.' And in Welton v. ”

“ They are transmitted without hesitation by the vendors upon the receipt of such orders, often even without knowledge of the parties sending them, their security being the retention of a lien upon the property shipped until the cash is actually paid. ”

“ Randell, 10 Pet. 368, in support of this position, where it was laid down, after a review of previous decisions, 'that it is not necessary the question should appear on the record to have been raised and decision made in direct and positive terms, in ipsissimis verbis, but it is sufficient if it appears by clear and necessary intendment that the question must have been raised, and must have been decided, in order to have induced the judgment.' See, also, Eureka, etc., Canal Co. v. Superior Court, 116 U.S. 410, 6 Sup. Ct. Rep. 429 ”