Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 10.djvu/372

 3C0 FEDERAL REPORTER. �demeanor, and may be arrested by the oflicer resisted, and, upon conviction, may be sentenced to a term net exceeding six raonths in the penitentiary, oi to pay a fine of $100, or both. " Sec. 4. This act shall take efiect immediately." �These provisions were enacted with an endeavor to avoid the grounds on which former legislation had been held void as repugnant to the constitution of the United States. The provisions of part 1, c. 4, tit. 4, of the Revised Statutes of New York, which authorized the recovery from the master of every vessel arriving in the port of New York from a foreign port of a sum of money for each passenger, and appropriated the money to the use of the marine hospital, were held void in the Passenger Cases, 7 How. 283, in January, 1849. After that varions amendments of the law were made, which came before the supreme court in Henderson v. The Mayor, 92 U. S. 259, in 1875, and were held void. This legislation required a bond for each pas- senger landed by a vessel from a foreign port to indemify the com- missioners of emigration and every municipality in the state against any expense for the relief or support of the passenger for four years, but the owner or consignee of the vessel could commute for the bond, and be released from giving it by paying $1.50 for each passenger within 24 hours after landing him. If the bond was not given, nor the sum paid within 24 houi-s, a penalty of $500 for each passenger was incurred, which was made a lien on the vessel, colleetible by attachment at the suit of the commissioners of emigration. The statute applied to every passenger, and not merely to every alien passenger. It applied to every passenger by a vessel from a foreign port, landed at the port of New York. The court held that the statute amounted to a requirement of the payment of the $1.50; that it was, in its purpose and effect, a law imposing a tax on the owner of the vessel for the privilege of landing in New York passengers transported from foreign countries; that, in taxing every passenger, it taxed a citizen of France landing from an English vessel for the support of English paupers landing at the same time from the same vessel ; that a law preseribing the terms on which vessels shall engage in trans- portiug passengers from European ports to ports in the United States is a regulation of commerce with foreign nations ; that congress alone could regulate such commerce; and that a state could not, under any power supposed to belong to it and called police power, enact such legislation as that under consideration. The court expressly reserved the question as to how far, in the absence of legislation by congress, a state could, by appropriate legislation, protect itself against actual ��� �