Opinion of the Court. tered outside of that State, and to compel the people of Minnesota, wishing to buy such meats, either to purchase those taken from animals inspected and slaughtered in the State, or to incur the cost of purchasing them, when desired for their own domestic use, at points beyond the State, that object is attained by the act in question. Our duty to maintain the Constitution will not permit us to shut our eyes to these obvious and necessary results of the Minnesota statute. If this legislation does not make such discrimination against the products and business of other States in favor of the products and business of Minnesota as interferes with and burdens commerce among the several States, it would be difficult to enact legislation that would have that result. # The principles we have announced are fully supported by the decisions of this court. In Woodruff v. Parham, 8 Wall. 123, 140, which involved the validity of an ordinance of the city of Mobile, Alabama, relating to sales at auction, Mr. Justice Miller, speaking for this court, said: "There is no attempt to discriminate injuriously against the products of other States, or the rights of their citizens, and the case is not therefore an attempt to fetter commerce among the States, or to deprive the citizens of other States of any privilege or immunity possessed by citizens of Alabama. But a law having such operation would, in our opinion, be an infringement of the provisions of the Constitution which relate to those subjects, and therefore void." So, in Hinson v. Lott, 8 Wall. 148, 151, decided at the same time, upon a writ of error from the Supreme Court of Alabama, it was said, in reference to the opinion of that court: "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 regulation covering the matter in question we need inquire no further. That court seems to have relieved itself of the objection by holding that the tax imposed by the State of Alabama was an exercise of the concurrent right of regulating commerce remaining with the Opinion of the Court. States until some regulation on the subject had been made by Congress. 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." In Welton v. Missouri, 91 U. S. 275, 281, the court, speaking by Mr. Justice Field, declared to be unconstitutional a statute of Missouri, imposing a license tax upon the sale by peddlers of certain kinds of personal property "not the growth, produce or manufacture" of that State, but which did not impose a like tax upon similar articles grown, produced, or manufactured in Missouri. After observing that if the tax there in question could be imposed at all, the power of the State could not be controlled, however unreasonable and oppressive its action, the court said: "Imposts operating as an absolute exclusion of the goods would be possible, and all the evils of discriminating state legislation, favorable to the interests of one State, and injurious to the interests of other States and countries, which existed previous to the adoption of the Constitution, might follow, and the experience of the last fifteen years shows would follow, from the action of some of the States." In Railroad Co. v. Husen, 95 U. S. 465, the court examined a statute of Missouri prohibiting, under penalties, any Texas, Mexican, or Indian cattle from being driven or otherwise conveyed into, or remaining in, any county of the State, between the first day of March and the first day of November in each year, by any person or persons whatsoever. While admitting, in the broadest terms, the power of a State to pass sanitary laws, and laws for the protection of life, liberty, health, or property within its borders, to prevent convicts, or persons and animals suffering under contagious or infectious diseases, from entering the State, and, for pur Opinion of the Court. poses of protection, to establish quarantine and inspections, the court, Mr. Justice Strong delivering its opinion, said that a State may not, "under the cover of exerting its police powers, substantially prohibit or burden either foreign or interstate commerce.' The general ground upon which it held the Missouri statute to be unconstitutional was, that its effect was "to obstruct interstate commerce, and to discriminate between the property of citizens of one State and that of citizens of other States." In Guy v. Baltimore, 100 U. S. 434, 443, the court adjudged to be void an ordinance of the city of Baltimore, exacting from vessels using the public wharves of that city, and laden with the products of other States, higher rates of wharfage than from vessels using the same wharves and laden with the products of Maryland. "Such exactions," the court said, "in 1 the name of wharfage, must be regarded as taxation upon interstate commerce. Municipal corporations, owning wharves upon the public navigable waters of the United States, and quasi public corporations transporting the products of the country, cannot be permitted by discriminations of that character to impede commercial intercourse and traffic among the several States and with foreign nations." The latest case in this court upon the subject of interstate commerce, as affected by local enactments discriminating against the products and citizens of other States, is Walling v. Michigan, 116 U. S. 446, 455. We there held to be unconstitutional a statute of Michigan, imposing a license tax upon persons, not residing or having their principal place of business in that State, but whose business was that of selling or soliciting the sale of intoxicating liquors to be shipped into the State from places without, a similar tax not being imposed in respect to the sale and soliciting for sale of liquors manufactured in Michigan. Mr. Justice Bradley, delivering the opinion of the court, said: “A discriminating tax imposed by a State operating to the disadvantage of the products of other States when introduced into the first-mentioned State, is, in effect, a regulation in restraint of commerce among the States, and as such is a usurpation of the power conferred by the Constitution upon the Congress of the United States." Opinion of the Court. It is, however, contended, in behalf of the State, that there is, in fact, no interference, by this statute, with the bringing of cattle, sheep and swine into Minnesota from other States, nor any discrimination against the products or business of other States, for the reason-such is the argument that the statute requiring an inspection of animals on the hoof, as a condition of the privilege of selling, or offering for sale, in the State, the meats taken from them, is applicable alike to all owners of such animals, whether citizens of Minnesota or citizens of other States. To this we answer, that a statute may, upon its face, apply equally to the people of all the States, and yet be a regulation of interstate commerce which a State may not establish. A burden imposed by a State upon interstate commerce is not to be sustained simply because the statute imposing it applies alike to the people of all the States, including the people of the State enacting such statute. Robbins v. Shelby Taxing District, 120 U. S. 489, 497; Case of the State Freight Tax, 15 Wall. 232. The people of Minnesota have as much right to protection against the enactments of that State, interfering with the freedom of commerce among the States, as have the people of other States. Although this statute is not avowedly, or in terms, directed against the bringing into Minnesota of the products of other States, its necessary effect is to burden or obstruct commerce with other States, as involved in the transportation into that State, for purposes of sale there, of all fresh beef, veal, mutton, lamb or pork, however free from disease may have been the animals from which it was taken. The learned counsel for the State relies with confidence upon Patterson v. Kentucky, 97 U. S. 501, as supporting the principles for which he contends. In that case, we sustained the constitutionality of a statute of Kentucky, forbidding the sale within that Commonwealth of oils or fluids used for illuminating purposes, and the product of coal, petroleum, or other bituminous substances, that would ignite at less than a certain temperature. Having a patent from the United States for an improved burning oil, Patterson claimed the right, by virtue of his patent, to sell anywhere in the United States Opinion of the Court. the oil described in it, without regard to the inspection laws of any State, enacted to protect the public safety. It was held that the statute of Kentucky was a mere police regulation, embodying the deliberate judgment of that Commonwealth that burning fluids, the product of coal, petroleum or other bituminous substances, which would ignite or permanently burn at less than a prescribed temperature, are unsafe for illuminating purposes. We said that the patent was not a regulation of commerce, nor a license to sell the patented article, but a grant that no one else should manufacture or sell that article, and, therefore, a grant simply of an exclusive right in the discovery, which the national authority could protect against all interference; that it was not to be supposed "that Congress intended to authorize or regulate the sale, within a State, of tangible personal property which that State declares to be unfit and unsafe for use, and by statute has prohibited from being sold or offered for sale within her limits;" also, that "the right which the patentee or his assignee possesses in the property created by the application of a patented discovery must be enjoyed subject to the complete and salutary power with which the States have never parted, of so defining and regulating the sale and use of property within their respective limits as to afford protection to the many against the injurious conduct of the few." Now, the counsel of the State asks: If the State may, by the exercise of its police power, determine for itself what test shall be made of the safety of illuminating oils, and prohibit the sale of all oils not subjected to and sustaining such test, although such oils are manufactured by a process patented under the Constitution and laws of the United States, why may it not determine for itself what test shall be made of the wholesomeness and safety of food, and prohibit the sale of all such food not submitted to and sustaining the test, although it may chance that articles otherwise subject to the Constitution and laws of the United States cannot sustain the test? The analogy, the learned counsel observes, seems close. But it is only seemingly close. There is no real analogy between that case and the one before us. The |