port of the committee as a guide to its true interpretation in order to dispel ambiguity, if any exists. The Delaware, 161 U. S. 459; Buttfield v. Stranahan, 192 U. S. 470. It is within the competency of Congress, when legislating as to matters exclusively within its control, to impose appropriate obligations and sanction their enforcement by reasonable money penalties, giving to executive officers the power to enforce such penalties without the necessity of invoking the judicial power. The authority, given by Congress in the Alien Immigration Act to the Secretary of Commerce and Labor to impose an exaction on a transportation company bringing to the United States an alien immigrant afflicted with a loathsome contagious disease when the medical examination establishes that the disease existed, and could have been detected by medical examination at the time of embarkation, does not purport to define and punish any criminal offense, but merely entails the infliction of a penalty enforceable by civil suit; and it is within the power of Congress to provide for such imposition by an executive officer, and the enforcement is not necessarily governed by the rules controlling the prosecution of criminal offenses. Wong Wing v. United States, 163 U. S. 228, distinguished; Hepner v. United States, 213 U. S. 103, followed. The constitutional right of Congress to enact legislation in regard to a matter wholly within its jurisdiction is the sole measure by which the validity of such legislation is to be determined by the courts; and the courts cannot proceed on the supposition that harm will follow if the legislature be permitted full sway and, in order to correct the legislature, exceed their own authority, and assume that wrong may be done in order to prevent wrong being accomplished. McCray v. United States, 195 U. S. 27. The imposition of a penalty by an executive officer when authorized by Congress in a matter wholly within its competency, such as alien immigration, is not unconstitutional under the Fifth Amendment as taking property without due process of law. The courts cannot make mere form and not substance the test of the constitutional power of Congress to enact a statute in regard to a matter over which Congress has absolute control. The prohibition of § 9 of the Alien Immigration Act of March 3, 1903, c. 1012, 32 Stat. 1213, against bringing into the United States alien immigrants afflicted with loathsome and contagious diseases is within the absolute power of Congress; and that provision of the act is not unconstitutional because it provides that the Secretary of Commerce and Labor may, without judicial trial, impose upon, and exact VOL. CCXIV-21 Argument for Plaintiffs in Error. 214 U.S. penalties from, the transportation company for violations of the provisions. The greater includes the less and where Congress has power to sanction a prohibition by penalties enforcible by executive officers without judicial trial on the ascertainment in a prescribed manner of certain facts, the person upon whom the penalty is imposed is not entitled to any hearing in the sense of raising an issue and tendering evidence as to the facts so ascertained, and is not, therefore, denied due process because the time which the executive officer allows him after notice of the ascertainment and imposition to produce evidence as to certain facts on which the fine might be remitted is too short. 155 Fed. Rep. 428, affirmed. THE facts, which involve the constitutionality of § 9 of the Alien Immigration Act of March 3, 1903, are stated in the opinion, Mr. William G. Choate and Mr. Lucius H. Beers for plaintiffs in error: Plaintiffs in error were deprived of their property without due process of law, because the fines were imposed in some cases without any previous notice and in all cases without any, or any adequate, opportunity to be heard. If under § 9 fines may be imposed without notice and without opportunity to be heard, Congress exceeded its power; and if § 9 did not have that meaning, then the Department of Commerce and Labor exceeded its powers. In either case the imposition of the fine was illegal. The Fifth Amendment left Congress without power to authorize any court or officer to take property without giving the owner previous notice and opportunity to be heard. Pennoyer v. Neff, 95 U. S. 714, 733; Scott v. McNeal, 154 U. S. 34, 46, 50; Simon v. Craft, 182 U. S. 427; Central Railway v. Wright, 207 U. S. 127; Stuart v. Palmer, 74 N. Y. 183; Santo, Clara v. So. Pac., 18 Fed. Rep. 385, 424; Cooper v. Wandsworth, 14 C. B., N. S. 180; King v. The Chancellor, 1 Strange, 557; Security Trust Co. v. Lexington, 203 U. S. 323, 333; Roller v. Holly, 176 U. S. 398, 409. 214 U. S. Argument for Plaintiffs in Error. Reasonable opportunity to be heard is just as necessary as reasonable notice. Londoner v. Denver, 210 U. S. 373, 378, 386. Section 9 violates Art. III of the Constitution relating to the judiciary and also the Fifth Amendment relating to the taking of property without due process of law, because it authorizes the taking of property without judicial trial. While in dealing with the alien himself and in determining any matter which relates to his admissibility Congress has full power and is not restrained by the Constitution from authorizing executive officers to take all necessary steps in regard thereto, § 9 is not a part of the system of inquiry necessary for that purpose. Its purpose is to require a competent medical examination at foreign ports and it requires a fine to be imposed when the Secretary is satisfied that the disease could have been detected by such an examination. Section 9 imposes a punishment and requires money to be taken in payment of a fine, and it therefore deals with personal and property rights which are protected by the Constitution. See Wong Wing v. United States, 163 U. S. 228, 237; United States v. Burke, 99 Fed. Rep. 895, 900; Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616, 634; Lees v. United States, 150 U. S. 476; Union Bridge Co. v. United States, 204 U. S. 364. These cases are clearly distinguishable from cases where this court has sanctioned the taking of property by the Government without a judicial trial and has placed the determination of the fact on which liability rests on an executive officer, because all of those cases rest upon the existence of an imperative necessity for prompt and summary determination while that necessity does not exist here. See Murray's Lessee v. Hoboken Land & Improvement Co., 18 How. 272. These fines now in question must either be fines in punishment for crime or penalties imposed for the doing of an unlawful or prohibited act not technically a crime. If they are fines imposed in punishment for crime, then the provisions of the Constitution relating to trial for crime apply. If they are Argument for Plaintiffs in Error. 214 U.S. penalties merely, then the recovery of those penalties would properly be the subject of civil actions, and, in that event, these cases come under the classification of ordinary civil actions, which Congress cannot withdraw from judicial cognizance. See also Springer v. United States, 102 U. S. 586, 593; In re Rapier, 143 U. S. 110, 134; Public Clearing House v. Coyne, 194 U. S. 497; Lawton v. Steele, 152 U. S. 133, 136, and Buttfield v. Stranahan, 192 U. S. 470, discussed and distinguished. It was not in the power of Congress to authorize the Secretary of Commerce and Labor tô take private property in the form of a fine without any proof that the alleged offense had been committed. This is punishment by executive order instead of by judicial procedure and no temporary clamor in favor of peremptory methods can warrant such a change in our institutions. Section 9 violates the Sixth Amendment inasmuch as it denies to the accused in a criminal prosecution the right to a jury trial. A suit for a penalty for an act prohibited by a statute of the United States is a criminal prosecution within the meaning of the Sixth Amendment. It is not the form, but the nature of the action, which determines whether it is criminal or civil. Iowa v. Chi., B. & Q. R. R. Co., 37 Fed. Rep. 497. Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616, 633, held that proceedings instituted for the purpose of declaring the forfeiture of a man's property by reason of offenses committed by him, though they may be civil in form, are in their nature criminal and within the reason of criminal proceedings for all the purposes of the Fourth Amendment, and of that portion of the Fifth Amendment which declares that no person shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself. Under the same reasoning they are "criminal prosecutions within the meaning of the Sixth Amendment. Lees v. United States, 150 U. S. 476, 480. 214 U. S. Argument for Defendant in Error. Mr. Wade H. Ellis, Assistant to the Attorney General, with whom Mr. Henry L. Stimson, Mr. Winfred T. Denison and Mr. E. P. Grosvenor were on the brief, for defendant in error: Congress is granted by Art. I, § 8 of the Constitution plenary power to regulate the bringing of aliens to our shores; and its acts within that field are valid unless they violate some explicit restriction of the Constitution. Nishimura Ekiu v. United States, 142 U. S. 651, 659; Turner v. Williams, 194 U. S. 279, 290; Head Money Cases, 112 U. S. 580, 595; Passenger Cases, 7 How. 283; Commissioners v. North German Lloyd, 92 U. S. 259; Chy Lung v. Freeman, 92 U. S. 275; People v. Compagnie Générale, 107 U. S. 59. It is also a part of the inherent control of the sovereign over its boundary line. Fong Yue Ting v. United States, 149 U. S. 698; Chinese Exclusion Case, 130 U. S. 581; Turner v. Williams, supra; Nishimura Ekiu v. United States, supra. Within such fields acts of Congress are constitutional unless they fall under some specific prohibition of the Constitution. Buttfield v. Stranahan, 192 U. S. 470; Lottery Case, 188 U. S. 321, 353, 356; Leisy v. Hardin, 135 U. S. 100, 108; Fairbank v. United States, 181 U. S. 283, 285. Section 9 falls under no such prohibition. Section 9 does not create an offense within the meaning of the word "crime" as used in the constitutional provisions requiring a jury trial. The penalty provided by § 9 is one of that long-established and well-recognized class of penalties which do not rise to the seriousness or dignity of crimes, but which may be recovered by procedure civil in form. Into such penalties the punitive element admittedly enters, but it has more of the character of punitive damages in tort than of criminal punishment. The Constitution has not imposed limitations as to the method to be prescribed by Congress for the recovery of these penalties, the only limitations which it has imposed being in relation to crimes. Schick v. United States, 195 U. S. 65, 67; United States v. Zucker, 161 U. S. 475, 481; Callan v. Wilson, 127 U. S. 540, |