ernment's counsel upon this point, as stated at page 80 of the SolicitorGeneral's brief, to be that all the taxes upon the commerce between the various other parts of the United States and Porto Rico are not duties levied by Congress under the general taxing power, contained in the 8th section of the 1st article, but that they are local taxes, in the imposition of which Congress is not limited by this clause; that they are to be treated as taxes imposed upon property in Porto Rico for the benefit exclusively of Porto Rico, just as a tax is levied in the Territory of Arizona by the local legislatiure, the proceeds of which are applied exclusively for the benefit of Arizona. It seems to me, in the first place, with regard to this contention, that it is impossible in the nature of things to say that a tax levied and collected at the ports of the States upon articles brought there from the island of Porto Rico is a local tax imposed by Congress under its power to govern Porto Rico. Congress, when acting in relation to the government of Porto Rico, in providing a form of government for the island, can only enforce laws passed in that connection within the territorial limits of the island. Perhaps it will make the distinction that I have in mind somewhat clearer to imagine an act of this kind having been passed by the local legislature of Porto Rico. Supposing, for the argument, that the United States had given the local legislature of the territory the same authority over local matters in Porto Rico which it itself possesses. An act passed by such a local legislature, however broad its powers, could not possibly impose a tax to be collected in the ports of the States. No local legislature would have the power to send its officers to the ports of a sovereign State to collect taxes there, nor could it impose a tax upon articles brought into Porto Rico from the States, because a tax of that character would be an interference with interstate commerce, under the decision of this court, it seems to me, in Stoutenburgh vs. Hennick. Let me refer your honors a moment to that decision. The case is reported in 129 United States, at page 141. In that case the legislative assembly of the District of Columbia, which had been invested by Congress with general municipal powers, had imposed a license tax upon drummers; that is, upon parties selling their goods within the District of Columbia by sample, the goods being brought from other States into the District of Columbia. I have not stated this case at any length in my brief, as it has been cited in other briefs of counsel, but I would refer your honors to it particularly. The decision is a very short one, and it seems to me that it is right in point upon this proposition. The opinion was rendered by Chief Justice FULLER, concurred in by all the other Justices except Mr. Justice

MILLER.

This decision puts commerce between the States and the District of Columbia upon the same footing as commerce between the several States, and decides that the local legislature could no more regulate such commerce by requiring persons engaged in such commerce to pay a tax than could the legislature of a State. That this is the meaning of this decision is made evident by the dissenting opinion of Mr. Jus tice Miller, who bases his dissent upon the point that commerce between the District and a State is not interstate commerce, and hence can be regulated by the local assembly.

This case of Stoutenburgh vs. Hennick is not a mere isolated deci sion, but has been followed in four or five other decisions of this court as an authority upon the proposition that the State legislatures cannot

interfere with interstate commerce (McCall vs. California, 136 U. S., 104, at 110; Crutcher vs. Kentucky, 141 U. S., 47, at 58; Emert vs. Missouri, 156 U. S., 296, at 320; Brennan vs. Titusville, 153 U. S., 289, at 305).

Now, another point with regard to this proposition: The power to regulate interstate commerce, expressly delegated to Congress by the Constitution, must necessarily include commerce between the States and the Territories; for, otherwise, if Congress has not the exclusive. power of regulation, then the States have the power to impose a duty or tax upon all articles produced in a Territory and brought within their borders; California has the power to tax or exclude the products of New Mexico; and New York or any other State has the power to tax or exclude the products of Porto Rico, Hawaii, the Philippines, Alaska, New Mexico, Arizona, and the District of Columbia.

It seems to me that, unless the regulation of commerce between States and Territories is within the exclusive power of Congress, then the States have a power by virtue of which all commerce between Porto Rico and the States can be prohibited and the island utterly ruined a power which they certainly did not have while Porto Rico was still a foreign country. All the recent acts allowing the States to exercise their police power with respect to prohibiting the importation or sale of intoxicating liquors, which are the subject of interstate commerce which are referred to in the case of Vance vs. Vandercook Company (170 U. S., 438) and numerous other recent decisions, put the Territories upon the same footing as the States and give the Territorial legislatures the same power as the State legislatures to exercise their police powers upon spirituous liquors when they are the subject of interstate commerce. There is very strong authority for holding that Congress can not tax interstate commerce at all, and commerce between States and Territories must stand, as I have said, upon the same footing.

Mr. Tucker, in his work on the Constitution, at § 256, after referring to Slaughter House Cases and to Stoutenburgh vs. Hennick, says, page 533:

"These considerations conclusively show that the power to regulate interstate commerce is not commensurate with the power of Congress to regulate foreign commerce; and, while it may prohibit the transitus of persons from foreign countries into the United States as a whole, and prohibit commerce in things by embargo, yet no such power is vested in Congress as to interstate commerce. A confirmation of this conclusion might be derived from the requirement of uniformity of duties, imposts, and excises; and from the prohibition upon Congress of making any regulation of commerce which would give preference to the ports of one State over those of another. The whole Constitution in all of its parts looks to the security of free trade in persons and goods between the States of the Union, and by this clause prohibits either Congress or the States to interfere with this freedom of intercourse and trade."

But, if Congress has the power to tax interstate commerce, such tax equally with a tax on foreign commerce must be imposed not by a local, but by a general, law, operating uniformly throughout the land. The only power of general taxation granted to Congress is that

contained in the eighth section of the first article, and the power thus granted can not be exercised anywhere without regard to the limitation of uniformity. Now, I think it is almost conceded by the counsel for the Government in this case that if Porto Rico is a part of the United States, and if the uniformity clause applies to the Territories as well as to the States, then this tax is not uniform throughout the United States. It seems to me that it can not be so considered. If it is uniform, then any duty upon the commerce of a particular State would be equally as uniform as this tax. The argument that it applies uniformly throughout the rest of the United States; that no distinction is made between the State of New York, the State of Florida, the State of Pennsylvania; that goods coming to these States from Porto Rico are all taxed alike, it seems to me does not meet the question, because here are articles of commerce between a particular Territory and the rest of the country which are taxed, while the same articles of commerce between the other Territories of New Mexico, Arizona, and Alaska and the remainder of the country are free from any tax. So it seems to me that the point which was suggested by some of the justices during Mr. Coudert's argument as to whether or not Congress is limited in imposing a local tax for local purposes in a Territory by the "uniformity clause" does not apply to this act; for this is not a local tax imposed solely within the territory of Porto Rico, but it is imposed as well at the ports of every State to which goods come from Porto Rico, and it affects not only the inhabitants of Porto Rico, people living within the territorial limits of that island, but it affects every citizen of the United States who carries on commerce between a State where he lives and the island. The taxes in this Dooley-Smith case and many others which must arise are paid, not by the people of Porto Rico who are enjoying the benefits of the Government there, but by the citizens of the State of New York who send their goods down there for sale, and the tax is imposed upon these articles of merchandise while they are in the course of transit between New York and San Juan, before they have become mingled with the general mass of property in the island, and, as the Attorney-General says in the brief in the Goetze case (p. 6), they are imposed because of the fact of shipment from a port of the United States to a port in the island of Porto Rico. It is not in any sense of the word a local tax, and consequently Congress in imposing it is limited by the 8th section of the 1st article, which I have just quoted.

I have devoted a considerable part of my brief to showing, or attempting to show, that an organized Territory is for many other purposes to be treated as a State, in order that the Constitution may have a consistent and uniform operation throughout the country. For example, the 4th article of the Constitution provides that "full faith and credit shall be given in each State to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other State, and the Congress may, by general laws, prescribe the manner in which such acts, etc., shall be proved." Since the earliest times Congress has passed laws providing for the manner in which acts of a Territorial legislature and proceedings of Territorial courts shall be proved in the States, and the validity of such acts, it seems to me, has never been questioned, and yet they are not acts which relate to the government of the Territory, but they are passed in exercise of this power granted by this section. Then the clause of the Constitution granting Congress the power to provide for

the extradition of fugitive criminals from one State into another has been exercised by Congress in passing laws providing for the extradition of fugitives from a State into a Territory, providing that they should be surrendered up by the executive authority of the Territory to the executive authority of the State, and, also, that fugitives from a Territory into a State should be rendered up by the authorities of the State to the authorities of the Territory. In the case of Roberts vs. Reilly, 116 U. S., at 94, cited on page 38 of my brief, the court held that the power of Congress to pass acts of this kind (although the question of their validity with regard to the Territories was not directly in question) was undoubted.

It seems to me that we need not go into the question in these cases of how far the first eight amendments extend over the Territories, because the counsel for the Government in the Solicitor-General's brief have virtually conceded that the general limitations apply to Congress when legislating for the Territories as well as when legislating for the States. The Solicitor-General says at the foot of page 57 of his brief that, "if there are any who believe that the President or Congress can govern the new possessions outside the Constitution and wholly irrespective of all its limitations, I am not of them. Neither the Executive nor Legislative nór Judicial branches of the Federal Government can act except through a power conferred by the Constitution; and, wherever a particular power is exercised, the limitation placed upon it by the Constitution must be observed." Now that is precisely the point for which we have been contending; that every limitation in the Constitution upon the powers of Congress applies to it in legislating with regard to the Territories, except such limitations as are specifically applicable to legislation with regard to the States. And unless the duties imposed by this act of April 12, 1900, upon commerce between the States and the island of Porto Rico can be sustained under the local power of taxation which Congress has in the Territories, they can not be sustained under the general taxing power, because such duties are not uniform throughout the United States.

Coming now to the point stated in my brief at page 43, that these duties violate the Constitution because laid on articles exported from a State, I may say that this objection applies to all the duties in suit in the two Dooley-Smith cases, and to those involved in the Armstrong case as well, to the duties collected before the ratification of the treaty by order of the President, and to those collected by his order after the ratification, and to those collected under the act of Congress.

In all these cases the collection of the duties was in violation of the plain language of the ninth section of the first article of the Constitution, which reads:

"No tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any State."

The President's order of January 20th, 1899, quoted at page 4 of my brief, imposes this tax as a "tariff of duties and taxes," and the order of August 19th, 1898, was similar in form. These orders of the President imposed the same duties upon goods brought into Porto Rico whether from a port of the United States or from a port of a foreign country. The act of Congress imposed upon goods brought from ports of the United States 15 per cent of the duties imposed upon goods brought from foreign countries. In both cases, as it is well

stated by the Attorney-General in his brief in the Goetze case (p. 6), the basis of these duties is "not ownership, but (1) the geographical origin of the shipment, and (2) the nature of the goods. The duty is imposed against merchandise, not the importer."

In other words, the duties are laid against the goods because their geographical origin is a State, and it becomes necessary, therefore, to determine whether these articles, when shipped from New York to Porto Rico are "exported," and, if so, for how long they retain their distinctive character of "articles exported from a State," so as to be within the constitutional prohibition.

We insist, in the first place, that for as long as Porto Rico remained a foreign country articles brought there from a State were exported from the State. Of this there can be no doubt; a more difficult question is as to whether articles sent to Porto Rico after it became a part of the United States were "exported." It seems to us that by specifying that not merely "articles exported"-that is to say, exported from the United States to foreign countries-should not be taxed, but that no tax should be laid on articles exported from any State, the framers of the Constitution meant to include articles exported from a State to any other part of the United States as well as articles exported to a foreign country. This view is strongly confirmed by the following clause in the ninth section of the first article, which provides that:

"No preference shall be given by any regulation of commerce or revenue to the ports of one State over those of another; nor shall vessels bound to or from one State be obliged to enter, clear, or pay duties in another."

This clause clearly prohibits the laying of any duties upon vessels bound from one State to another, and it would be a very singular and awkward construction to hold that while the vessels could not be "obliged to pay duties," yet that duties could be laid upon their cargoes, consisting necessarily of "articles exported from a State."

In common parlance the term "articles exported" is not limited to "articles exported from the United States to a foreign country;" on the contrary, it is usual to speak of articles being exported from one part of the country to another. The words "exports" and "exportation are thus used in the opinions in Coe vs. Errol, 116 U. S., 525, 526, and 527, and in Turpin vs. Burgess, 117 U. S., at 506, 507. Some meaning must be given to the words "exported from any State" as distinguished from the word "exports" in the clause in the 10th section of the first article, which prohibits the States from laying any imposts or duties on exports.

This distinction is clearly brought out in the well-considered decision of Mr. Justice Miller in the case of Woodruff vs. Parham, 8 Wall.. 123, at 132, where he says, speaking of the general power of Congress to lay "taxes, duties, imposts, and excises":"

"Is the word imposts, as here used, intended to confer upon Congress a distinct power to levy a tax upon all goods or merchandise carried into one State from another? Or is the power limited to duties on foreign imports? If the former be intended. then the power conferred is curiously rendered nugatory by the subsequent clause of the ninth section, which declares that no tax shall be laid on articles exported from any State, for no article can be imported from one State into another which is not at the same time exported from the former.”