hort, the power to tax was one thing, the police power something
quite different. To concede the former would be to concede a power which
could be exercised to any extent and at the will of its possessor;[773]
to concede the latter was to concede a power which was limited of its
own inherent nature to certain necessary objectives. In New York _v._
Miln,[774] however, the Court which came after Marshall inclined toward
the notion of a power of internal police which was also unlimited; and
on this ground upheld a New York statute which required masters of all
vessels arriving at the port of New York to make reports as to
passengers carried, and imposed fines for failure to do so. "We are of
opinion," the Court said, "that the act is not a regulation of commerce,
but of police." But, when New York, venturing a step further, passed an
act to authorize State health commissioners to collect certain fees from
captains arriving in ports of that State, and when Massachusetts enacted
a statute requiring captains of ships to give bonds as to immigrants
landed, both measures were pronounced void, either as conflicting with
treaties and laws of the United States or as invading the "exclusive"
power of Congress to regulate foreign commerce.[775] Following the Civil
War, indeed, New York _v._ Miln was flatly overruled, and a New York
statute similar to the one sustained in 1837 was pronounced void as
intruding upon Congress's powers.[776] Nothing was gained, said the
Court, by invoking "[the police power] * * *, it is clear, from the
nature of our complex form of government, that, whenever the statute of
a State invades the domain of legislation which belongs exclusively to
the Congress of the United States, it is void, no matter under what
class of powers it may fall, or how closely allied to powers conceded to
belong to the States."[777] At the same time a California statute
requiring a bond from shipowners as a condition precedent to their being
permitted to land persons whom a State commissioner of immigration might
choose to consider as coming within certain enumerated classes, e.g.,
"debauched women," was also disallowed. Said the Court: "If the right of
the States to pass statutes to protect themselves in regard to the
criminal, the pauper, and the diseased foreigner, landing within their
borders, exists at all, it is limited to such laws as are absolutely
necessary for that purpose; and this mere police regulation cannot
extend