upon to remove the case from the control of these general principles.

1. It is insisted that, however complete may be the power of Congress to legislate concerning the exclusion of aliens and to entrust the enforcement of legislation of that character to administrative officers, nevertheless the particular legislation here in question is repugnant to the Constitution because it defines a criminal offense and authorizes a purely administrative official to determine whether the defined crime has been committed, and, if so, to inflict punishment. Conclusive support for the legal proposition upon which this contention must rest, it is insisted, results from the ruling in Wong Wing v. United States, 163 U. S. 228, where it was said (p. 237):

"We regard it as settled by our previous decisions that the United States can, as a matter of public policy, by Congressional enactment, forbid aliens or classes of aliens from coming within their borders, and expel aliens or classes of aliens from their territory, and can, in order to make effectual such decree of exclusion or expulsion, devolve the power and duty of identifying and arresting the persons included in such decree, and causing their deportation, upon executive or subordinate officials.

"But when Congress sees fit to further promote such a policy by subjecting the persons of such aliens to infamous punishment at hard labor, or by confiscating their property, we think such legislation, to be valid, must provide for a judicial trial to establish the guilt of the accused. No limits can be put by the courts upon the power of Congress to protect, by summary methods, the country from the advent of aliens whose race or habits render them undesirable as citizens, or to expel such if they have already found their way into our land and unlawfully remain therein. But to declare unlawful residence within the country to be an infamous crime, punishable by deprivation of liberty and property, would be to pass out of the sphere of constitutional legislation, unless provision were made that the fact of guilt should first be established by a judicial trial.

It is not consistent with the theory of our Government that the legislature should, after having defined an offense as an infamous crime, find the fact of guilt and adjudge the punishment by one of its own agents.'

But in so far as the case of Wong Wing held that the trial and punishment for an infamous offense was not an administrative but a judicial function, it is wholly inapposite to this case, since, on the face of the section which authorizes the Secretary of Commerce and Labor to impose the exaction which is complained of, it is apparent that it does not purport to define and punish an infamous crime, or indeed any criminal offense whatever. Clear as is this conclusion from the text of § 9, when considered alone, it becomes, if possible, clearer when the section is enlightened by an analysis of the context of the act and by a consideration of the report of the Senate committee to which we have previously made reference. We say by an analysis of the context of the act, because, as we have previously stated, its various sections accurately distinguish between those cases where it was intended that particular violations of the act should be considered as criminal and be punished accordingly, and those where it was contemplated that violations should not constitute crime, but merely entail the infliction of a penalty, enforcible in some cases by purely administrative action and in others by civil suit. We say also by a consideration of the report of the Senate committee, since that report leaves no doubt that the sole purpose of § 9 was to impose a penalty, based upon the medical examination for which the statute provided, thus tending, by the avoidance of controversy and delay, to secure the efficient performance by the steamship company of the duty to examine in the foreign country, before embarkation, and thereby aid in carrying out the policy of Congress to exclude from the United States aliens afflicted with loathsome or dangerous contagious diseases as defined in the act. The contention that because the exaction which the statute authorizes the Secretary of Commerce and Labor to impose is a penalty,

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therefore its enforcement is necessarily governed by the rules controlling in the prosecution of criminal offenses, is clearly without merit, and is not open to discussion. Hepner v. United States, 213 U. S. 103.

2. But it is argued that even though it be conceded that Congress may in some cases impose penalties for the violation of a statutory duty and provide for their enforcement by civil suit instead of by criminal prosecution, as held in Hepner v. United States, nevertheless that doctrine does not warrant the conclusion that a penalty may be authorized, and its collection committed to an administrative officer without the necessity of resorting to the judicial power. In all cases of penalty or punishment, it is contended, enforcement must depend upon the exertion of judicial power, either by civil or criminal process, since the distinction between judicial and administrative functions cannot be preserved consistently with the recognition of an administrative power to enforce a penalty without resort to judicial authority. But the proposition magnifies the judicial to the detriment of all other departments of the Government, disregards many previous adjudications of this court and ignores practices often manifested and hitherto deemed to be free from any possible constitutional question.

Referring in Bartlett v. Kane, 16 How. 263, to the authority of Congress to confide to administrative officers the enforcement of tariff legislation, it was said (p. 272):

"The interference of the courts with the performance of the ordinary duties of the executive departments of the government would be productive of nothing but mischief; and we are satisfied that such a power was never intended to be given to them. Decatur v. Paulding, 14 Pet. 499."

And in the same case, in considering the nature and character of a penalty of ten per cent which the tariff act of 1842 (5 Stat. 563, chap. 270) authorized administrative officers to impose in cases of undervaluation, it was said (p. 274):

"An examination of the revenue laws upon the subject of levying additional duties, in consequence of the fact of an un

dervaluation by the importer, shows that they were exacted as discouragements of fraud, and to prevent efforts by importers to escape the legal rates of duty. In several of the acts this additional duty has been distributed among officers of the customs upon the same conditions as penalties and forfeitures. As between the United States and the importer,

it must still be regarded in the light of a penal duty."

See also Murray's Lessee et al. v. Hoboken Land & Improvement Co., 18 How. 272.

In Passavant v. United States, 148 U. S. 214, the authority of Congress to delegate to administrative officers final and conclusive authority as to the valuation of imported merchandise, accompanied with the power to impose a penalty for undervaluation, was reiterated, and the doctrine of Bartlett v. Kane was applied. And the same principle was upheld in Origet v. Hedden, 155 U. S. 228.

In accord with this settled judicial construction the legislation of Congress from the beginning, not only as to tariff but as to internal revenue, taxation and other subjects, has proceeded on the conception that it was 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.

It is insisted that the decisions just stated and the legislative practices referred to are inapposite here, because they all relate to subjects peculiarly within the authority of the legislative department of the Government, and which, from the necessity of things, required the concession that administrative officers should have the authority to enforce designated penalties without resort to the courts. But over no conceivable subject is the legislative power of Congress more complete than it is over that with which the act we are now considering deals. If the proposition implies that the right of Congress to enact legislation is to be determined, not by the grant of power made

by the Constitution, but by considering the particular emergency which has caused Congress to exert a specified power, then the proposition is obviously without foundation. This is apparent, since the contention then would proceed upon the assumption that it is within the competency of judicial authority to control legislative action as to subjects over which there is complete legislative authority, on the theory that there was no necessity calling for the exertion of legislative power. As the authority of Congress over the right to bring aliens into the United States embraces every conceivable aspect of that subject, it must follow that if Congress has deemed it necessary to impose particular restrictions on the coming in of aliens, and to sanction such prohibitions by penalties enforcible by administrative authority, it follows that the constitutional right of Congress to enact such legislation is the sole measure by which its validity is to be determined by the courts. The suggestion that if this view be applied grave abuses may arise from the mistaken or wrongful exertion by the legislative department of its authority but intimates that if the legislative power be permitted its full sway within its constitutional sphere, harm and wrong will follow, and therefore it behooves the judiciary to apply a corrective by exceeding its own authority: But as was pointed out in Cary v. Curtis, 3 How. 236, and as has been often since emphasized by this court (McCray v. United States, 195 U. S. 27), the proposition but mistakenly assumes that the courts can alone be safely intrusted with power, and that hence it is their duty to unlawfully exercise prerogatives which they have no right to exert, upon the assumption that wrong must be done to prevent wrong being accomplished.

3. It is urged that the fines which constituted the exactions were repugnant to the Fifth Amendment, because amounting to a taking of property without due process of law, since, as asserted, the fines were imposed, in some cases, without any previous notice, and in all cases without any adequate notice or opportunity to defend. Stated in the briefest form, the