CHAPTER II.

RELATION OF THE STATES TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.

MARTIN v. HUNTER'S LESSEE.

1 Wheaton, 304; 3 Curtis, 562. 1816.

[See page 746, infra.]

LANE COUNTY v. OREGON.

7 Wallace, 71. 1868.

[AFTER the passage by Congress of the legal tender act, it was provided by statute in Oregon that county officers should collect the State taxes in gold and silver coin, and that the counties should pay such taxes into the State treasury in the same kinds of money. Under this statute the State brought action in a State court against Lane County for a certain number of dollars "in gold and silver coin," alleged to be due from the county as State revenue. Defendant pleaded a tender in United States legal tender notes. A demurrer to this answer was sustained, and judgment rendered against defendant for recovery of the amount claimed in gold and silver coin, and this judgment was affirmed in the State Supreme Court. Defendant brought the case to this court on writ of error.]

MR. CHIEF JUSTICE CHASE delivered the opinion of the court. [The legal tender acts of Congress are referred to, providing for the issue of United States notes, which should be receivable in payment of all taxes, debts, and demands due to the United States, except duties on imports, and should be lawful money and legal tender in payment of all debts, public and private, within the United States.]

The first of these was the act of February 25, 1862, which authorized the Secretary of the Treasury to issue, on the credit of the United States, one hundred and fifty millions of dollars in United States notes, and provided that these notes "shall be receivable in payment of all taxes, internal duties, excises, debts and demands due to the United States, except duties on imports, and of all claims and demands against the United States of every kind whatsoever, except interest on bonds and notes, which shall be paid in coin; and shall also be lawful money and legal tender in payment of all debts, public and

private, within the United States, except duties on imports and interest as aforesaid."

The second act contains a provision nearly in the same words with that just recited, and under these two acts two-thirds of the entire issue was authorized. It is unnecessary, therefore, to refer to the third act, by which the notes to be issued under it are not in terms made receivable and payable, but are simply declared to be lawful money and a legal tender.

In the first act no emission was authorized of any notes under five dollars, nor in the other two of any under one dollar. The notes, authorized by different statutes, for parts of a dollar, were never declared to be lawful money or a legal tender. 12 Stat. at Large, 592; ib. 711.

It is obvious, therefore, that a legal tender in United States notes of the precise amount of taxes admitted to be due to the State could not be made. Coin was then, and is now, the only legal tender for debts less than one dollar. In the view which we take of this case, this is not important. It is mentioned only to show that the general words, "all debts," were not intended to be taken in a sense absolutely literal.

We proceed then to inquire whether, upon a sound construction of the acts, taxes imposed by a State government upon the people of the State, are debts within their true meaning.

In examining this question it will be proper to give some attention to the constitution of the States and to their relations as United States.

The people of the United States constitute one nation, under one government, and this government, within the scope of the powers with which it is invested, is supreme. On the other hand, the people of each State compose a State, having its own government, and endowed with all the functions essential to separate and independent existence. The States disunited might continue to exist. Without the States in union there could be no such political body as the United States.

Both the States and the United States existed before the Constitution. The people, through that instrument, established a more perfect union by substituting a national government, acting, with ample power, directly upon the citizens, instead of the Confederate government, which acted with powers, greatly restricted, only upon the States. But in many articles of the Constitution the necessary existence of the States, and, within their proper spheres, the independent authority of the States, is distinctly recognized. To them nearly the whole charge of interior regulation is committed or left; to them and to the people all powers not expressly delegated to the national government are reserved. The general condition was well stated by Mr. Madison in the Federalist, thus: "The Federal and State governments are in fact but different agents and trustees of the

people, constituted with different powers and designated for different purposes."

Now, to the existence of the States, themselves necessary to the existence of the United States, the power of taxation is indispensable. It is an essential function of government. It was exercised by the Colonies; and when the Colonies became States, both before and after the formation of the Confederation, it was exercised by the new governments. Under the Articles of Confederation the government of the United States was limited in the exercise of this power to requisitions upon the States, while the whole power of direct and indirect taxation of persons and property, whether by taxes on polls, or duties on imports, or duties on internal production, manufacture, or use, was acknowledged to belong exclusively to the States, without any other limitation than that of non-interference with certain treaties made by Congress. The Constitution, it is true, greatly changed this condition of things. It gave the power to tax, both directly and indirectly, to the national government, and, subject to the one prohibition of any tax upon exports and to the conditions of uniformity in respect to indirect and of proportion in respect to direct taxes, the power was given without any express reservation. On the other hand, no power to tax exports, or imports except for a single purpose and to an insignificant extent, or to lay any duty on tonnage, was permitted to the States. In respect, however, to property, business, and persons, within their respective limits, their power of taxation remained and remains entire. It is indeed a concurrent power, and in the case of a tax on the same subject by both governments, the claim of the United States, as the supreme authority, must be preferred; but with this qualification it is absolute. The extent to which it shall be exercised, the subjects upon which it shall be exercised, and the mode in which it shall be exercised, are all equally within the discretion of the legislatures to which the States commit the exercise of the power. That discretion is restrained only by the will of the people expressed in the State constitutions or through elections, and by the condition that it must not be so used as to burden or embarrass the operations of the national government. There is nothing in the Constitution which contemplates or authorizes any direct abridgement of this power by national legislation. To the extent just indicated it is as complete in the States as the like power, within the limits of the Constitution, is complete in Congress. If, therefore, the condition of any State, in the judgment of its legislature, requires the collection of taxes in kind, that is to say, by the delivery to the proper officers of a certain proportion of products, or in gold and silver bullion, or in gold and silver coin, it is not easy to see upon what principle the national legislature can interfere with the exercise, to that end, of this power, original in the States, and never as yet surrendered. If this be so, it is certainly, a reasonable conclusion that Congress did not intend, by the general terms of the currency acts, to restrain the exercise of this power in the manner shown by the statutes of Oregon.

[The Court refers to the language of the acts to show that it was not intended that taxes payable to a State should be included under the term, "debts, public and private." The judgment of the State court is affirmed.]

TARBLE'S CASE.

13 Wallace, 397. 1871.

[THIS was a proceeding by habeas corpus under the laws of Wisconsin to determine the rightfulness of the detention of a person by an officer of the United States army under the claim that he was a duly enlisted soldier. From a decision of the Supreme Court of the State, sustaining an order of release, the United States prosecuted a writ of error before this court.]

Mr. JUSTICE FIELD, after stating the case, delivered the opinion of the court, as follows:

The important question is thus presented, whether a State court commissioner has jurisdiction, upon habeas corpus, to inquire into the validity of the enlistment of soldiers into the military service of the United States, and to discharge them from such service when, in his judgment, their enlistment has not been made in conformity with the laws of the United States. The question presented may be more generally stated thus: Whether any judicial officer of a State has jurisdiction to issue a writ of habeas corpus, or to continue proceedings under the writ when issued, for the discharge of a person held under the authority, or claim and color of the authority, of the United States, by an officer of that government. For it is evident, if such jurisdiction may be exercised by any judicial officer of a State, it may be exercised by the court commissioner within the county for which he is appointed; and if it may be exercised with reference to soldiers detained in the military service of the United States, whose enlistment is alleged to have been illegally made, it may be exercised with reference to persons employed in any other department of the public service when their illegal detention is asserted. It may be exercised in all cases where parties are held under the authority of the United States, whenever the invalidity of the exercise of that authority is affirmed. The jurisdiction, if it exist at all, can only be limited in its application by the legislative power of the State. It may even reach to parties imprisoned under sentence of the National courts, after regular indictment, trial, and conviction, for offences against the laws of the United States. As we read the opinion of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin in this case, this is the claim of authority asserted by that tribunal for itself and for the judicial officers of that State. It does, indeed, disclaim any

right of either to interfere with parties in custody, under judicial sentence, when the National court pronouncing sentence had jurisdiction to try and punish the offenders, but it asserts, at the same time, for itself and for each of those officers, the right to determine, upon habeas corpus, in all cases, whether that court ever had such jurisdiction. In the case of Booth, which subsequently came before this court, it not only sustained the action of one of its justices in discharging a prisoner held in custody by a marshal of the United States, under a warrant of commitment for an offence against the laws of the United States, issued by a commissioner of the United States; but it discharged the same prisoner when subsequently confined under sentence of the District Court of the United States for the same offence, after indictment, trial, and conviction, on the ground that, in its judgment, the act of Congress creating the offence was unconstitutional; and in order that its decision in that respect should be final and conclusive, directed its clerk to refuse obedience to the writ of error issued by this court, under the act of Congress, to bring up the decision for review.

It is evident, as said by this court when the case of Booth was finally brought before it, if the power asserted by that State court existed, no offence against the laws of the United States could be punished by their own tribunals, without the permission and according to the judgment of the courts of the State in which the parties happen to be imprisoned; that if that power existed in that State court, it belonged equally to every other State court in the Union where a prisoner was within its territorial limits; and, as the different State courts could not always agree, it would often happen that an act, which was admitted to be an offence and justly punishable in one State, would be regarded as innocent, and even praiseworthy in another, and no one could suppose that a government, which had hitherto lasted for seventy years, "enforcing its laws by its own tribunals, and preserving the union of the States, could have lasted a single year, or fulfilled the trusts committed to it, if offences against its laws could not have been punished without the consent of the State in which the culprit was found."

The decision of this court in the two cases which grew out of the arrest of Booth, that of Ableman v. Booth, and that of The United States v. Booth, 21 How., 506, disposes alike of the claim of jurisdiction by a State court, or by a State judge, to interfere with the authority of the United States, whether that authority be exercised by a Federal officer or be exercised by a Federal tribunal. In the first of these cases Booth had been arrested and committed to the custody of a marshal of the United States by a commissioner appointed by the District Court of the United States, upon a charge of having aided and abetted the escape of a fugitive slave. Whilst thus in custody a justice of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin issued a writ of habeas corpus directed to the marshal, requiring him to