Page:James Bryce American Commonwealth vol 1.djvu/353

CHAP. XXVII itself suppressed an insurrection against its legitimate government. It is the duty of a State to do so if it can, and to seek Federal aid only in extreme cases, when resistance is formidable.

So far we have been considering the relations of the National government to the States as political communities. Let us now see what are its relations to the individual citizens of these States. They are citizens of the Union as well as of these States, and owe allegiance to both powers. Each power has a right to command their obedience. To which then, in case of conflict, is obedience due?

The right of the State to obedience is wider in the area of matters which it covers. Prima facie, every State law, every order of a competent State authority, binds the citizen, whereas the National government has but a limited power: it can legislate or command only for certain purposes or on certain subjects. But within the limits of its power, its authority is higher than that of the State, and must be obeyed even at the risk of disobeying the State. A recent instance in which a State official suffered for obeying his State where its directions clashed with a provision of the Federal Constitution may set the point in a clear light. A statute of California had committed to the city and county authority of San Francisco the power of making regulations for the management of gaols. This authority had in 1876 passed an ordinance directing that every male imprisoned in the county gaol should "immediately on his arrival have his hair clipped to a uniform length of one inch from the scalp." The sheriff having, under this ordinance, cut off the queue of a Chinese prisoner, Ho Ah Kow, was sued for damages by the prisoner, and the court, holding that the ordinance had been passed with a special view to the injury of the Chinese, who consider the preservation of their queue a matter of religion as well as of honour, and that it operated unequally and oppressively upon them, in contravention of the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States, declared the ordinance invalid, and gave judgment against the sheriff. Similar subsequent attempts against