to another be called an export? It was insisted in The Passenger Cases, to which we have already referred, that foreigners coming to this country were imports within the meaning of the Constitution, and the provision of that instrument that the migration or importation of such persons as any of the States then existing should think proper to admit, should not be prohibited prior to the year 1808, but that a tax might be imposed on such importation, was relied on as showing that the word import, applied to persons as well as to merchandise. It was answered that this latter clause had exclusive reference to slaves, who were property as well as persons, and therefore proved nothing. While some. of the judges who concurred in holding those laws unconstitutional, gave as one of their reasons that they were taxes on imports, it is evident that this view did not receive the assent of the majority of the court. The application of this provision of the Constitution to the proposition which we have stated in regard to the citizen, is still less satisfactory than it would be to the case of foreigners migrating to the United States.

But it is unnecessary to consider this point further in the view which we have taken of the case.

1.

As regards the commerce clause of the Constitution, two propositions are advanced on behalf of the defendant in error. That the tax imposed by the State on passengers is not a regulation of commerce. 2. That if it can be so considered, it is one of the powers which the State can exercise, until Congress has so legislated as to indicate its intention to exclude State legislation on the same subject.

The proposition that the power to regulate commerce, as granted to Congress by the Constitution, necessarily excludes the exercise by the States of any of the powers thus granted, is one which has been much considered in this court, and the earlier discussions left the question in much doubt. As late as the January Term, 1849, the opinions of the judges in The Passenger Cases show that the question was considered to be one of much importance in those cases, and was even then unsettled, though previous decisions of the court were relied on by the judges themselves as deciding it in different ways. It was certainly, so far as those cases affected it, left an open question.

In the case of Cooley v. Board of Wardens,1 four years later, the same question came directly before the court in reference to the local laws of the port of Philadelphia concerning pilots.

1 12 Howard, 299.

Perhaps no more satisfactory solution has ever been given of this vexed question than the one furnished by the court in that

case.

It may be that under the power to regulate commerce among the States, Congress has authority to pass laws, the operation of which would be inconsistent with the tax imposed by the State of Nevada, but we know of no such statute now in existence. Inasmuch, therefore, as the tax does not itself institute any regulation of commerce of a national character, or which has a uniform operation over the whole country, it is not easy to maintain, in view of the principles on which those cases are decided, that it violates the clause of the Federal Constitution which we have had under review.

But we do not concede that the question before us is to be determined by the two clauses of the Constitution which we have been examining.

The people of these United States constitute one nation. They have a government in which all of them are deeply interested. This government has necessarily a capital established by law, where its principal operations are conducted. Here sits its legislature, composed of senators and representatives, from the States and from the people of the States. Here resides the President, directing, through thousands of agents, the execution of the laws over all this vast country. Here is the seat of the supreme judicial power of the nation, to which all its citizens have a right to resort to claim justice at its hands. Here are the great executive departments, administering the offices of the mails, of the public lands, of the collection and distribution of the public revenues, and of our foreign relations. These are all established and conducted under the admitted powers of the Federal government. That government has a right to call to this point any or all of its citizens to aid in its service, as members of the Congress, of the courts, of the executive departments, and to fill all its other offices; and this right cannot be made to depend upon the pleasure of a State over whose territory they must pass to reach the point where these services must be rendered. The government also, has its offices of secondary importance in all other parts of the country. On the sea-coasts and on the rivers it has its ports of entry. In the interior it has its land offices, its revenue offices, and its sub-treasuries. In all these it demands the services of its citizens, and is entitled to bring them to those points from all quarters of the nation, and no power can exist in a State to obstruct

this right that would not enable it to defeat the purposes for which the government was established.

The Federal power has a right to declare and prosecute wars, and, as a necessary incident, to raise and transport troops through and over the territory of any State of the Union.

If this right is dependent in any sense, however limited, upon the pleasure of a State, the government itself may be overthrown by an obstruction to its exercise. Much the largest part of the transportation of troops during the late rebellion was by railroads, and largely through States whose people were hostile to the Union. If the tax levied by Nevada on railroad passengers had been the law of Tennessee, enlarged to meet the wishes of her people, the treasury of the United States could not have paid the tax necessary to enable its armies to pass through her territory.

But if the government has these rights on her own account, the citizen also has correlative rights. He has the right to come to the seat of government to assert any claim he may have upon that government, or to transact any business he may have with it. To seek its protection, to share its offices, to engage in administering its functions. He has a right to free access to its sea-ports, through which all the operations of foreign trade and commerce are conducted, to the sub-treasuries, the land offices, the revenue offices, and the courts of justice in the several States, and this right is in its nature independent of the will of any State over whose soil he must pass in the exercise of it.

The views here advanced are neither novel nor unsupported by authority. The question of the taxing power of the States, as its exercise has affected the functions of the Federal government, has been repeatedly considered by this court, and the right of the States in this mode to impede or embarrass the constitutional operations of that government, or the rights which its citizens hold under it, has been uniformly denied. [Here follows a discussion of McCulloch v. Md., 4 Wheat.., 316; Brown v. Md., 12 Wheat., 419; Weston v. Charleston, 2 Pet., 449.]

In all these cases, the opponents of the taxes levied by the States were able to place their opposition on no express provision of the Constitution, except in that of Brown v. Maryland. But in all the other cases, and in that case also, the court distinctly placed the invalidity of the State taxes on the ground that they interfered with an authority of the Federal government, which was itself only to be sustained as necessary and proper to the exercise of some other power expressly granted.

In The Passenger Cases, to which reference has already been

made, Justice Grier, with whom Justice Catron concurred, makes this one of the four propositions on which they held the tax void in those cases. Judge Wayne expresses his dissent to Judge Grier's views; and perhaps this ground received the concurrence of more of the members of the court who constituted the majority than any other. But the principles here laid down may be found more clearly stated in the dissenting opinion of the Chief Justice in those cases, and with more direct pertinency to the case now before us than anywhere else. After expressing his views fully in favor of the validity of the tax, which he said had exclusive reference to foreigners, so far as those cases were concerned, he proceeds to say, for the purpose of preventing misapprehension, that so far as the tax affected American citizens it could not in his opinion. be maintained. He then adds: "Living as we do under a common government, charged with the great concerns of the whole Union, every citizen of the United States from the most remote States or territories, is entitled to free access, not only to the principal departments established at Washington, but also to its judicial tribunals, and public offices in every State in the Union. . For all the great purposes for which the Federal government was formed we are one people, with one common country. We are all citizens of the United States, and as members of the same community must have the right to pass and repass through every part of it without interruption, as freely as in our own States. And a tax imposed by a State, for entering its territories or harbors, is inconsistent with the rights which belong to citizens of other States as members of the Union, and with the objects which that Union was intended to attain. Such a power in the States could produce nothing but discord and mutual irritation, and they very clearly do not possess it."

Although these remarks are found in a dissenting opinion, they do not relate to the matter on which the dissent was founded. They accord with the inferences which we have already drawn from the Constitution itself, and from the decisions of this court in exposition of that instrument.

Those principles, as we have already stated them in this opinion, must govern the present case.

Judgment reversed, and the case remanded to the Supreme Court. of the State of Nevada, with directions to discharge the plaintiff in error from custody.

VEAZIE BANK v. FENNO.

8 Wallace, 533. Decided 1869.

ON certificate of division for the Circuit Court for Maine.
The Constitution ordains that:

"The Congress shall have power

"To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts, and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.

"To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes.

"To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin."

It also ordains that:

"Direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers."

"No capitation or other direct tax shall be laid, unless in proportion to the census or enumeration herein before directed to be made."

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

With these provisions in force as fundamental law, Congress passed, July 13th, 1866,1 an act, the second clause of the 9th section of which enacts:

"That every National banking association, State bank, or State banking association, shall pay a tax of ten per centum on the amount of notes of any person, State bank, or State banking association, used for circulation and paid out by them after the 1st day of August, 1866, and such tax shall be assessed and paid in such manner as shall be prescribed by the commissioner of internal revenue."

Under this act a tax of ten per cent. was assessed upon the Veazie Bank, for its bank notes issued for circulation, after the day named in the act.

The Veazie Bank was a corporation chartered by the State of Maine, with authority to issue bank notes for circulation, and the notes on which the tax imposed by the act was collected, were issued under this authority. There was nothing in the case show

1 14 Stat. at Large, 146.