e it to say that especially in this field opinions must be read in
the setting of the particular cases and as the product of preoccupation
with their special facts."[537]

THE STATE FREIGHT TAX CASE

The great leading case dealing with the relation of the State's taxing
power to interstate commerce is that of the State Freight Tax,[538]
decided in 1873. The question before the Court was the validity of a
Pennsylvania statute, passed eight years earlier, which required every
company transporting freight within the State, with certain exceptions,
to pay a tax at specified rates on each ton of freight carried by it.
Overturning the act, the Court held: "(1) The transportation of freight,
or of the subjects of commerce, is a constituent part of commerce
itself; (2) a tax upon freight, transported from State to State, is a
regulation of commerce among the States; (3) whenever the subjects in
regard to which a power to regulate commerce is asserted are in their
nature National, or admit of one uniform system or plan of regulation,
they are exclusively within the regulating control of Congress; (4)
transportation of passengers or merchandise through a State, or from one
State to another, is of this nature; (5) hence a statute of a State
imposing a tax upon freight, taken up within the State and carried out
of it, or taken up without the State and brought within it, is repugnant
to that provision of the Constitution of the United States, which
ordains that 'Congress shall have power to regulate commerce with
foreign nations and among the several States, and with the Indian
tribes.'"[539]

GOODS IN TRANSIT

States, therefore, may not tax property in transit in interstate
commerce. A nondiscriminatory tax, however, is permitted if the goods
have not yet started in interstate commerce, or have completed the
interstate transit even though still in the original package, unless
they are foreign imports in the original package; and States may also
impose a nondiscriminatory tax when there is a break in an interstate
transit, and the goods have not been restored to the current of
interstate commerce. Such is the law in brief. Two questions arise,
first, when do goods originating in a State pass from under its power to
tax; and, second, when do goods arriving from another State lose their
immunity?

The leading case dealing with the first of these questions is Coe _v._
Errol,[540] in which the matter at issue was the right of