U.S. Supreme Court Slaughterhouse Cases, 83 U.S. 16 Wall. 36 36 (1872) Slaughterhouse Cases* 83 U.S. (16 Wall.) 36 ERROR TO THE SUPREME COURT OF
LOUISIANA 1. The legislature of Louisiana, on the
8th of March, 1869, passed an act granting to a corporation,
created by it, the exclusive right, for twenty-five years, to have
and maintain slaughterhouses, landings for cattle, and yards for
inclosing cattle intended for sale or slaughter within the parishes
of Orleans, Jefferson, and St. Bernard, in that State (a territory
which, it was said -- see infra, p. 83 U. S. 85 --
contained 1154 square miles, including the city of New Orleans, and
a population of between two and three hundred thousand people), and
prohibiting all other persons from building, keeping, or having
slaughterhouses, landings for cattle, and yards for cattle intended
for sale or slaughter, within those limits, and requiring that all
cattle and other animals intended for sale or slaughter in that
district, should be brought to the yards and slaughterhouses of the
corporation, and authorizing the corporation to exact certain
prescribed fees for the use of its wharves and for each animal
landed, and certain prescribed fees for each animal slaughtered,
besides the head, feet, gore, and entrails, except of swine. Held, that this grant of exclusive right or privilege,
guarded by proper limitation of the prices to be charged, and
imposing the duty of providing ample conveniences, with permission
to all owners of stock to land, and of all Page 83 U. S. 37 butchers to slaughter at those places, was a police regulation
for the health and comfort of the people (the statute locating them
where health and comfort required), within the power of the state
legislatures, unaffected by the Constitution of the United States
previous to the adoption of the thirteenth and fourteenth articles
of amendment.

															2. The Parliament of Great Britain and the State legislatures of
this country have always exercised the power of granting exclusive
rights when they were necessary and proper to effectuate a purpose
which had in view the public good, and the power here exercised is
of that class, and has, until now, never been denied.

															Such power is not forbidden by the thirteenth article of
amendment and by the first section of the fourteenth article. An
examination of the history of the causes which led to the adoption
of those amendments and of the amendments themselves demonstrates
that the main purpose of all the three last amendments was the
freedom of the African race, the security and perpetuation of that
freedom, and their protection from the oppressions of the white men
who had formerly held them in slavery.

															3. In giving construction to any of those articles, it is
necessary to keep this main purpose steadily in view, though the
letter and spirit of those articles must apply to all cases coming
within their purview, whether the party concerned be of African
descent or not.

															While the thirteenth article of amendment was intended primarily
to abolish African slavery, it equally forbids Mexican peonage or
the Chinese coolie trade when they amount to slavery or involuntary
servitude, and the use of the word "servitude" is intended to
prohibit all forms of involuntary slavery of whatever class or
name.

															The first clause of the fourteenth article was primarily
intended to confer citizenship on the negro race, and secondly to
give definitions of citizenship of the United States and
citizenship of the States, and it recognizes the distinction
between citizenship of a State and citizenship of the United States
by those definitions.

															The second clause protects from the hostile legislation of the
States the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United
States, as distinguished from the privileges and immunities of
citizens of the States.

															These latter, as defined by Justice Washington in Corfield
v. Coryell, and by this court in Ward v. Maryland, embrace generally those fundamental civil rights for the security
and establishment of which organized society is instituted, and
they remain, with certain exceptions mentioned in the Federal
Constitution, under the care of the State governments, and of this
class are those set up by plaintiffs.

															4. The privileges and immunities of citizens of the United
States are those which arise out of the nature and essential
character of the national government, the provisions of its
Constitution, or its laws and treaties made in pursuance thereof,
and it is these which are placed under the protection of Congress
by this clause of the Thirteenth amendment.

															It is not necessary to inquire here into the full force of the
clause forbidding a State to enforce any law which deprives a
person of life, liberty, Page 83 U. S. 38 or property without due process of law, for that phrase has been
often the subject of judicial construction, and is, under no
admissible view of it, applicable to the present case.

															5. The clause which forbids a State to deny to any person the
equal protection of the laws was clearly intended to prevent the
hostile discrimination against the negro race so familiar in the
States where he had been a slave, and, for this purpose, the clause
confers ample power in Congress to secure his rights and his
equality before the law.

															The three cases -- the parties to which, as plaintiff and
defendants in error, are given specifically as a subtitle, at the
head of this report, but which are reported together also under the
general name which, in common parlance, they had acquired -- grew
out of an act of the legislature of the State of Louisiana,
entitled

															"An act to protect the health of the City of New Orleans, to
locate the stock landings and slaughterhouses, and to incorporate
'The Crescent City Live-Stock Landing and Slaughter-House
Company,'"

															which was approved on the 8th of March, 1869, and went into
operation on the 1st of June following, and the three cases were
argued together.

															The act was as follows:

															"SECTION 1. Be it enacted, &c., That from and after
the first day of June, A.D. 1869, it shall not be lawful to land,
keep, or slaughter any cattle, beeves, calves, sheep, swine, or
other animals, or to have, keep, or establish any stock-landing,
yards, pens, slaughterhouses, or abattoirs at any point or place
within the city of New Orleans, or the parishes of Orleans,
Jefferson, and St. Bernard, or at any point or place on the
east bank of the Mississippi River within the corporate limits of
the city of New Orleans, or at any point on the west bank of the
Mississippi River above the present depot of the New Orleans,
Opelousas, and Great Western Railroad Company, except that
the 'Crescent City Stock Landing and Slaughter-House Company' may
establish themselves at any point or place as hereinafter
provided. Any person or persons, or corporation or company carrying
on any business or doing any act in contravention of this act, or
landing, slaughtering or keeping any animal or animals in violation
of this act, shall be liable to a fine of $250 for each and Page 83 U. S. 39 every violation, the same to be recoverable, with costs of suit,
before any court of competent jurisdiction."

															The second section of the act created one Sauger and sixteen
other person named, a corporation, with the usual privileges of a
corporation, and including power to appoint officers and fix their
compensation and term of office, to fix the amount of the capital
stock of the corporation and the number of shares thereof.

															The act then went on:

															"SECTION 3. Be it further enacted, &c., That said
company or corporation is hereby authorized to establish and erect
at its own expense, at any point or place on the east bank of the
Mississippi River within the parish of St. Bernard, or in the
corporate limits of the city of New Orleans, below the United
States Barracks, or at any point or place on the west bank of the
Mississippi River below the present depot of the New Orleans,
Opelousas, and Great Western Railroad Company, wharves, stables,
sheds, yards, and buildings necessary to land, stable, shelter,
protect, and preserve all kinds of horses, mules, cattle, and other
animals, and from and after the time such buildings, yards,
&c., are ready and complete for business, and notice thereof is
given in the official journal of the State, the said Crescent City
Live-Stock Landing and Slaughter-House Company shall have the
sole and exclusive privilege of conducting and carrying on the
livestock landing and slaughterhouse business within the limits and
privileges granted by the provisions of this act, and cattle
and other animals destined for sale or slaughter in the city of New
Orleans, or its environs, shall be landed at the livestock landings
and yards of said company, and shall be yarded, sheltered, and
protected, if necessary, by said company or corporation, and said
company or corporation shall be entitled to have and receive for
each steamship landing at the wharves of the said company or
corporation, $10; for each steamboat or other watercraft, $5, and
for each horse, mule, bull ox, or cow landed at their wharves, for
each and every day kept, 10 cents; for each and every hog, calf,
sheep, or goat, for each and every day kept, 5 cents, all without
including the feed, and said company or corporation shall be
entitled to keep and detain each and all of said animals until said
charges are fully paid. But Page 83 U. S. 40 if the charges of landing, keeping, and feeding any of the
aforesaid animals shall not be paid by the owners thereof after
fifteen days of their being landed and placed in the custody of the
said company or corporation, then the said company or corporation,
in order to reimburse themselves for charges and expenses incurred,
shall have power, by resorting to judicial proceedings, to
advertise said animals for sale by auction, in any two newspapers
published in the city of New Orleans, for five days, and after the
expiration of said five days, the said company or corporation may
proceed to sell by auction, as advertised, the said animals, and
the proceeds of such sales shall be taken by the said company or
corporation and applied to the payment of the charges and expenses
aforesaid, and other additional costs, and the balance, if any,
remaining from such sales, shall be bold to the credit of and paid
to the order or receipt of the owner of said animals. Any person or
persons, firm or corporation violating any of the provisions of
this act, or interfering with the privileges herein granted, or
landing, yarding, or keeping any animals in violation of the
provisions of this act, or to the injury of said company or
corporation, shall be liable to a fine or penalty of $250, to be
recovered with costs of suit before any court of competent
jurisdiction."

															"The company shall, before the first of June, 1869, build and
complete A GRAND SLAUGHTERHOUSE of sufficient capacity to
accommodate all butchers, and in which to slaughter 500 animals per
day; also a sufficient number of sheds and stables shall be erected
before the date aforementioned to accommodate all the stock
received at this port, all of which to be accomplished before the
date fixed for the removal of the stock landing, as provided in the
first section of this act, under penalty of forfeiture of their
charter."

															"SECTION 4. Be it further enacted, &c., That the
said company or corporation is hereby authorized to erect, at its
own expense, one or more landing places for livestock, as
aforesaid, at any points or places consistent with the provisions
of this act, and to have and enjoy from the completion thereof, and
after the first day of June, A.D. 1869, the exclusive privilege
of having landed at their wharves or landing places all animals
intended for sale or slaughter in the parishes of Orleans and
Jefferson, and are hereby also authorized (in connection) to
erect at its own expense one or more slaughterhouses, at any points
or places Page 83 U. S. 41 consistent with the provisions of this act, and to have and
enjoy, from the completion thereof, and after the first day of
June, A.D. 1869, the exclusive privilege of having slaughtered
therein all animals the meat of which is destined for sale in the
parishes of Orleans and Jefferson. "

															"SECTION 5. Be it further enacted, &c., That
whenever said slaughterhouses and accessory buildings shall be
completed and thrown open for the use of the public, said company
or corporation shall immediately give public notice for thirty
days, in the official journal of the State, and within said thirty
days' notice, and within, from and after the first day of June,
A.D. 1869, all other stock landings and slaughterhouses within
the parishes of Orleans, Jefferson, and St. Bernard shall be
closed, and it will no longer be lawful to slaughter cattle, hogs,
calves, sheep, or goats, the meat of which is determined for sale
within the parishes aforesaid, under a penalty of $100, for each
end every offence, recoverable, with costs of suit, before any
court if competent jurisdiction; that all animals to be
slaughtered, the meat whereof is determined for sale in the
parishes of Orleans or Jefferson, must be slaughtered in the
slaughtehouses erected by the said company or corporation, and
upon a refusal of said company or corporation to allow any animal
or animals to be slaughtered after the same has been certified by
the inspector, as hereinafter provided, to be fit for human food,
the said company or corporation shall be subject to a fine in each
case of $250, recoverable, with costs of suit, before any court of
competent jurisdiction; said fines and penalties to be paid over to
the auditor of public accounts, which sum or sums shall be credited
to the educational fund."

															"SECTION 6. Be it further enacted, &c., That the
governor of the State of Louisiana shall appoint a competent
person, clothed with police powers, to act as inspector of all
stock that is to be slaughtered, and whose duty it will be to
examine closely all animals intended to be slaughtered, to
ascertain whether they are sound and fit for human food or not, and
if sound and fit for human food, to furnish a certificate stating
that fact to the owners of the animals inspected, and without said
certificate no animals can be slaughtered for sale in the
slaughterhouses of said company or corporation. The owner of said
animals so inspected to pay the inspector 10 cents for each and
every animal so inspected, one-half of which fee the said inspector
shall retain for his services, and the other half of said fee shall
be Page 83 U. S. 42 paid over to the auditor of public accounts, said payment to be
made quarterly. Said inspector shall give a good and sufficient
bond to the State, in the sum of $5,000, with sureties subject to
the approval of the governor of the State of Louisiana, for the
faithful performance of his duties. Said inspector shall be fined
for dereliction of duty $50 for each neglect. Said inspector may
appoint as many deputies as may be necessary. The half of the fees
collected as provided above, and paid over to the auditor of public
accounts, shall be placed to the credit of the educational
fund."

															"SECTION 7. Be it further enacted, &c., That all
persons slaughtering or causing to be slaughtered cattle or other
animals in said slaughterhouses shall pay to the said company or
corporation the following rates or perquisites, viz.: for all
beeves, $1 each; for all hogs and calves, 50 cents each; for all
sheep, goats, and lambs, 30 cents each, and the said company or
corporation shall be entitled to the head, feet, gore, and entrails
of all animals excepting hogs, entering the slaughterhouses and
killed therein, it being understood that the heart and liver are
not considered as a part of the gore and entrails, and that the
said heart and liver of all animals slaughtered in the
slaughterhouses of the said company or corporation shall belong, in
all cases, to the owners of the animals slaughtered."

															"SECTION 8. Be it .further enacted, &c., That all
the fines and penalties incurred for violations of this act shall
be recoverable in a civil suit before any court of competent
jurisdiction, said suit to be brought and prosecuted by said
company or corporation in all cases where the privileges granted to
the said company or corporation by the provisions of this act are
violated or interfered with; that one-half of all the fines and
penalties recovered by the said company or corporation
[ sic in copy -- REP.] in consideration of their
prosecuting the violation of this act, and the other half shall be
paid over to the auditor of public accounts, to the credit of the
educational fund."

															"SECTION 9. Be it further enacted, &c., That said
Crescent City Livestock Landing and Slaughter-House Company shall
have the right to construct a railroad from their buildings to the
limits of the city of New Orleans, and shall have the right to run
cars thereon, drawn by horses or other locomotive power, as they
may see fit; said railroad to be built on either of the public
roads running along the levee on each side of the Mississippi Page 83 U. S. 43 River. The said company or corporation shall also have the right
to establish such steam ferries as they may see fit to run on the
Mississippi River between their buildings and any points or places
on either side of said river."

															"SECTION 10. Be it further enacted, &c., That at
the expiration of twenty-five years from and after the passage of
this act, the privileges herein granted shall expire."

															The parish of Orleans containing (as was said [ Footnote 1 ]) an area of 150 square miles, the
parish of Jefferson of 384, and the parish of St. Bernard of 620,
the three parishes together 1154 square miles, and they having
between two and three hundred thousand people resident therein,
and, prior to the passage of the act above quoted, about 1,000
persons employed daily in the business of procuring, preparing, and
selling animal food, the passage of the act necessarily produced
great feeling. Some hundreds of suits were brought on the one side
or on the other; the butchers, not included in the "monopoly" as it
was called, acting sometimes in combinations, in corporations, and
companies and sometimes by themselves, the same counsel, however,
apparently representing pretty much all of them. The ground of the
opposition to the slaughterhouse company's pretensions, so far as
any cases were finally passed on in this court, was that the act of
the Louisiana legislature made a monopoly and was a violation of
the most important provisions of the thirteenth and fourteenth
Articles of Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. The
language relied on of these articles is thus:

															" AMENDMENT XIII" "either slavery nor involuntary servitude except as a
punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly
convicted, shall exist within the United States, nor any place
subject to their jurisdiction."

															" AMENDMENT XIV" "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and
subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United
States and of the State wherein they reside. " Page 83 U. S. 44 "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or
property, without due process of law, nor deny to any person
within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

															The Supreme Court of Louisiana decided in favor of the company,
and five of the cases came into this court under the 25th section
of the Judiciary Act in December, 1870, where they were the subject
of a preliminary motion by the plaintiffs in error for an order in
the nature of a supersedeas. After this, that is to say, in March,
1871, a compromise was sought to be effected, and certain parties
professing, apparently, to act in a representative way in behalf of
the opponents to the company, referring to a compromise that they
assumed had been effected, agreed to discontinue "all writs of
error concerning the said company, now pending in the Supreme Court
of the United States;" stipulating further "that their agreement
should be sufficient authority for any attorney to appear and move
for the dismissal of all said suits." Some of the cases were thus
confessedly dismissed. But the three of which the names are given
as a subtitle at the head of this report were, by certain of the
butchers, asserted not to have been dismissed. And Messrs. M. H.
Carpenter, J. S. Black, and T. J. Durant, in behalf of the new
corporation, having moved to dismiss them also as embraced in the
agreement, affidavits were filed on the one side and on the other;
the affidavits of the butchers opposed to the "monopoly" affirming
that they were plaintiffs in error in these three cases, and that
they never consented to what had been done, and that no proper
authority had been given to do it. This matter was directed to be
heard with the merits. The case being advanced was first heard on
these, January 11th, 1872; Mr. Justice Nelson being indisposed and
not in his seat. Being ordered for reargument, it was heard again
February 3d, 4th, and 5th, 1873. Page 83 U. S. 57 Mr. Justice MILLER, now, April 14th, 1873, delivered the opinion
of the court.

															These cases are brought here by writs of error to the Supreme
Court of the State of Louisiana. They arise out of the efforts of
the butchers of New Orleans to resist the Crescent City Livestock
Landing and Slaughter-House Company in the exercise of certain
powers conferred by the charter which created it, and which was
granted by the legislature of that State.

															The cases named on a preceding page, * with others which
have been brought here and dismissed by agreement, were all decided
by the Supreme Court of Louisiana in favor of the Slaughter-House
Company, as we shall hereafter call it for the sake of brevity, and
these writs are brought to reverse those decisions.

															The records were filed in this court in 1870, and were argued
before it at length on a motion made by plaintiffs in error for an
order in the nature of an injunction or supersedeas, Page 83 U. S. 58 pending the action of the court on the merits. The opinion on
that motion is reported in 77
U. S. 10 Wallace 273.

															On account of the importance of the questions involved in these
cases, they were, by permission of the court, taken up out of their
order on the docket and argued in January, 1872. At that hearing,
one of the justices was absent, and it was found, on consultation,
that there was a diversity of views among those who were present.
Impressed with the gravity of the questions raised in the argument,
the court, under these circumstances, ordered that the cases be
placed on the calendar and reargued before a full bench. This
argument was had early in February last.

															Preliminary to the consideration of those questions is a motion
by the defendant to dismiss the cases on the ground that the
contest between the parties has been adjusted by an agreement made
since the records came into this court, and that part of that
agreement is that these writs should be dismissed. This motion was
heard with the argument on the merits, and was much pressed by
counsel. It is supported by affidavits and by copies of the written
agreement relied on. It is sufficient to say of these that we do
not find in them satisfactory evidence that the agreement is
binding upon all the parties to the record who are named as
plaintiffs in the several writs of error, and that there are
parties now before the court, in each of the three cases, the names
of which appear on a preceding page, * who have not
consented to their dismissal, and who are not bound by the action
of those who have so consented. They have a right to be heard, and
the motion to dismiss cannot prevail.

															The records show that the plaintiffs in error relied upon, and
asserted throughout the entire course of the litigation in the
State courts, that the grant of privileges in the charter of
defendant, which they were contesting, was a violation of the most
important provisions of the thirteenth and fourteenth articles of
amendment of the Constitution of the United States. The
jurisdiction and the duty of this court Page 83 U. S. 59 to review the judgment of the State court on those questions is
clear, and is imperative.

															The statute thus assailed as unconstitutional was passed March
8th, 1869, and is entitled

															"An act to protect the health of the city of New Orleans, to
locate the stock landings and slaughterhouses, and to incorporate
the Crescent City Livestock Landing aud Slaughter-House
Company."

															The first section forbids the landing or slaughtering of animals
whose flesh is intended for food within the city of New Orleans and
other parishes and boundaries named and defined, or the keeping or
establishing any slaughterhouses or abattoirs within those limits
except by the corporation thereby created, which is also limited to
certain places afterwards mentioned. Suitable penalties are enacted
for violations of this prohibition.

															The second section designates the corporators, gives the name to
the corporation, and confers on it the usual corporate powers.

															The third and fourth sections authorize the company to establish
and erect within certain territorial limits, therein defined, one
or more stockyards, stock landings, and slaughterhouses, and
imposes upon it the duty of erecting, on or before the first day of
June, 1869, one grand slaughterhouse of sufficient capacity for
slaughtering five hundred animals per day.

															It declares that the company, after it shall have prepared all
the necessary buildings, yards, and other conveniences for that
purpose, shall have the sole and exclusive privilege of conducting
and carrying on the livestock landing and slaughterhouse business
within the limits and privilege granted by the act, and that all
such animals shall be landed at the stock landings and slaughtered
at the slaughterhouses of the company, and nowhere else. Penalties
are enacted for infractions of this provision, and prices fixed for
the maximum charges of the company for each steamboat and for each
animal landed.

															Section five orders the closing up of all other stock
landings Page 83 U. S. 60 and slaughterhouses after the first day of June, in the parishes
of Orleans, Jefferson, and St. Bernard, and makes it the duty of
the company to permit any person to slaughter animals in their
slaughterhouses under a heavy penalty for each refusal. Another
section fixes a limit to the charges to be made by the company for
each animal so slaughtered in their building, and another provides
for an inspection of all animals intended to be so slaughtered by
an officer appointed by the governor of the State for that
purpose.

															These are the principal features of the statute, and are all
that have any bearing upon the questions to be decided by us.

															This statute is denounced not only as creating a monopoly and
conferring odious and exclusive privileges upon a small number of
persons at the expense of the great body of the community of New
Orleans, but it is asserted that it deprives a large and
meritorious class of citizens -- the whole of the butchers of the
city -- of the right to exercise their trade, the business to which
they have been trained and on which they depend for the support of
themselves and their families, and that the unrestricted exercise
of the business of butchering is necessary to the daily subsistence
of the population of the city.

															But a critical examination of the act hardly justifies these
assertions.

															It is true that it grants, for a period of twenty-five years,
exclusive privileges. And whether those privileges are at the
expense of the community in the sense of a curtailment of any of
their fundamental rights, or even in the sense of doing them an
injury, is a question open to considerations to be hereafter
stated. But it is not true that it deprives the butchers of the
right to exercise their trade, or imposes upon them any restriction
incompatible with its successful pursuit, or furnishing the people
of the city with the necessary daily supply of animal food.

															The act divides itself into two main grants of privilege, the
one in reference to stock landings and stockyards, and Page 83 U. S. 61 the other to slaughterhouses. That the landing of livestock in
large droves, from steamboats on the bank of the river, and from
railroad trains, should, for the safety and comfort of the people
and the care of the animals, be limited to proper places, and those
not numerous it needs no argument to prove. Nor can it be injurious
to the general community that, while the duty of making ample
preparation for this is imposed upon a few men, or a corporation,
they should, to enable them to do it successfully, have the
exclusive right of providing such landing places, and receiving a
fair compensation for the service.

															It is, however, the slaughterhouse privilege which is mainly
relied on to justify the charges of gross injustice to the public
and invasion of private right.

															It is not, and cannot be successfully controverted that it is
both the right and the duty of the legislative body -- the supreme
power of the State or municipality -- to prescribe and determine
the localities where the business of slaughtering for a great city
may be conducted. To do this effectively, it is indispensable that
all persons who slaughter animals for food shall do it in those
places and nowhere else. The statute under consideration defines these localities and
forbids slaughtering in any other. It does not, as has been
asserted, prevent the butcher from doing his own slaughtering. On
the contrary, the Slaughter-House Company is required, under a
heavy penalty, to permit any person who wishes to do so to
slaughter in their houses, and they are bound to make ample
provision for the convenience of all the slaughtering for the
entire city. The butcher then is still permitted to slaughter, to
prepare, and to sell his own meats; but he is required to slaughter
at a specified place, and to pay a reasonable compensation for the
use of the accommodations furnished him at that place.

															The wisdom of the monopoly granted by the legislature may be
open to question, but it is difficult to see a justification for
the assertion that the butchers are deprived of the right to labor
in their occupation, or the people of their daily service in
preparing food, or how this statute, with the Page 83 U. S. 62 duties and guards imposed upon the company, can be said to
destroy the business of the butcher, or seriously interfere with
its pursuit.

															The power here exercised by the legislature of Louisiana is, in
its essential nature, one which has been, up to the present period
in the constitutional history of this country, always conceded to
belong to the States, however it may now be questioned in
some of its details.

															"Unwholesome trades, slaughterhouses, operations offensive to
the senses, the deposit of powder, the application of steam power
to propel cars, the building with combustible materials, and the
burial of the dead, may all,"

															says Chancellor Kent, [ Footnote
2 ]

															"be interdicted by law, in the midst of dense masses of
population, on the general and rational principle that every person
ought so to use his property as not to injure his neighbors, and
that private interests must be made subservient to the general
interests of the community."

															This is called the police power, and it is declared by Chief
Justice Shaw [ Footnote 3 ] that
it is much easier to perceive and realize the existence and sources
of it than to mark its boundaries, or prescribe limits to its
exercise.

															This power is, and must be from its very nature, incapable of
any very exact definition or limitation. Upon it depends the
security of social order, the life and health of the citizen, the
comfort of an existence in a thickly populated community, the
enjoyment of private social life, and the beneficial use of
property. "It extends," says another eminent judge, [ Footnote 4 ]

															"to the protection of the lives, limbs, health, comfort, and
quiet of all persons, and the protection of all property within the
State, . . . and persons and property are subjected to all kinds of
restraints and burdens in order to secure the general comfort,
health, and prosperity of the State. Of the perfect right of the
legislature to do this, no question ever was, or, upon acknowledged
general principles, ever can be made, so far as natural persons are
concerned. " Page 83 U. S. 63 The regulation of the place and manner of conducting the
slaughtering of animals, and the business of butchering within a
city, and the inspection of the animals to be killed for meat, and
of the meat afterwards, are among the most necessary and frequent
exercises of this power. It is not, therefore, needed that we
should seek for a comprehensive definition, but rather look for the
proper source of its exercise.

															In Gibbons v. Ogden, [ Footnote 5 ] Chief Justice Marshall, speaking of inspection
laws passed by the States, says:

															"They form a portion of that immense mass of legislation which
controls everything within the territory of a State not surrendered
to the General Government -- all which can be most advantageously
administered by the States themselves. Inspection laws, quarantine
laws, health laws of every description, as well as laws for
regulating the internal commerce of a State, and those which
respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c., are component parts. No
direct general power over these objects is granted to Congress, and
consequently they remain subject to State legislation."

															The exclusive authority of State legislation over this subject
is strikingly illustrated in the case of the City of New York
v. Miln. [ Footnote 6 ] In
that case, the defendant was prosecuted for failing to comply with
a statute of New York which required of every master of a vessel
arriving from a foreign port in that of New York City to report the
names of all his passengers, with certain particulars of their age,
occupation, last place of settlement, and place of their birth. It
was argued that this act was an invasion of the exclusive right of
Congress to regulate commerce. And it cannot be denied that such a
statute operated at least indirectly upon the commercial
intercourse between the citizens of the United States and of
foreign countries. But notwithstanding this, it was held to be an
exercise of the police power properly within the control of the
State, and unaffected by the clause of the Constitution which
conferred on Congress the right to regulate commerce. Page 83 U. S. 64 To the same purpose are the recent cases of the The License
Tax, [ Footnote 7 ] and United States v. De Witt. [ Footnote 8 ] In the latter case, an act of Congress which
undertook as a part of the internal revenue laws to make it a
misdemeanor to mix for sale naphtha and illuminating oils, or to
sell oil of petroleum inflammable at less than a prescribed
temperature, was held to be void because, as a police regulation,
the power to make such a law belonged to the States, and did not
belong to Congress.

															It cannot be denied that the statute under consideration is
aptly framed to remove from the more densely populated part of the
city the noxious slaughterhouses, and large and offensive
collections of animals necessarily incident to the slaughtering
business of a large city, and to locate them where the convenience,
health, and comfort of the people require they shall be located.
And it must be conceded that the means adopted by the act for this
purpose are appropriate, are stringent, and effectual. But it is
said that, in creating a corporation for this purpose, and
conferring upon it exclusive privileges -- privileges which it is
said constitute a monopoly -- the legislature has exceeded its
power. If this statute had imposed on the city of New Orleans
precisely the same duties, accompanied by the same privileges,
which it has on the corporation which it created, it is believed
that no question would have been raised as to its
constitutionality. In that case the effect on the butchers in
pursuit of their occupation and on the public would have been the
same as it is now. Why cannot the legislature confer the same
powers on another corporation, created for a lawful and useful
public object, that it can on the municipal corporation already
existing? That wherever a legislature has the right to accomplish a
certain result, and that result is best attained by means of a
corporation, it has the right to create such a corporation, and to
endow it with the powers necessary to effect the desired and lawful
purpose, seems hardly to admit of debate. The proposition is ably
discussed and affirmed in the case of McCulloch v. The State of
Maryland [ Footnote 9 ] in
relation to the power of Congress to organize Page 83 U. S. 65 the Bank of the United States to aid in the fiscal operations of
the government.

															It can readily be seen that the interested vigilance of the
corporation created by the Louisiana legislature will be more
efficient in enforcing the limitation prescribed for the stock
landing and slaughtering business for the good of the city than the
ordinary efforts of the officers of the law.

															Unless, therefore, it can be maintained that the exclusive
privilege granted by this charter to the corporation is beyond the
power of the legislature of Louisiana, there can be no just
exception to the validity of the statute. And, in this respect, we
are not able to see that these privileges are especially odious or
objectionable. The duty imposed as a consideration for the
privilege is well defined, and its enforcement well guarded. The
prices or charges to be made by the company are limited by the
statute, and we are not advised that they are, on the whole,
exorbitant or unjust.

															The proposition is therefore reduced to these terms: can any
exclusive privileges be granted to any of its citizens, or to a
corporation, by the legislature of a State?

															The eminent and learned counsel who has twice argued the
negative of this question has displayed a research into the history
of monopolies in England and the European continent only equalled
by the eloquence with which they are denounced.

															But it is to be observed that all such references are to
monopolies established by the monarch in derogation of the rights
of his subjects, or arise out of transactions in which the people
were unrepresented, and their interests uncared for. The great Case of Monopolies, reported by Coke and so fully stated
in the brief, was undoubtedly a contest of the commons against the
monarch. The decision is based upon the ground that it was against
common law, and the argument was aimed at the unlawful assumption
of power by the crown, for whoever doubted the authority of
Parliament to change or modify the common law? The discussion in
the House of Commons cited from Macaulay clearly Page 83 U. S. 66 establishes that the contest was between the crown and the
people represented in Parliament.

															But we think it may be safely affirmed that the Parliament of
Great Britain, representing the people in their legislative
functions, and the legislative bodies of this country, have, from
time immemorial to the present day, continued to grant to persons
and corporations exclusive privileges -- privileges denied to other
citizens -- privileges which come within any just definition of the
word monopoly, as much as those now under consideration, and that
the power to do this has never been questioned or denied. Nor can
it be truthfully denied that some of the most useful and beneficial
enterprises set on foot for the general good have been made
successful by means of these exclusive rights, and could only have
been conducted to success in that way.

															It may, therefore, be considered as established that the
authority of the legislature of Louisiana to pass the present
statute is ample unless some restraint in the exercise of that
power be found in the constitution of that State or in the
amendments to the Constitution of the United States, adopted since
the date of the decisions we have already cited.

															If any such restraint is supposed to exist in the constitution
of the State, the Supreme Court of Louisiana having necessarily
passed on that question, it would not be open to review in this
court.

															The plaintiffs in error, accepting this issue, allege that the
statute is a violation of the Constitution of the United States in
these several particulars:

															That it creates an involuntary servitude forbidden by the
thirteenth article of amendment;

															That it abridges the privileges and immunities of citizens of
the United States;

															That it denies to the plaintiffs the equal protection of the
laws; and,

															That it deprives them of their property without due process of
law, contrary to the provisions of the first section of the
fourteenth article of amendment. Page 83 U. S. 67 This court is thus called upon for the first time to give
construction to these articles.

															We do not conceal from ourselves the great responsibility which
this duty devolves upon us. No questions so far-reaching and
pervading in their consequences, so profoundly interesting to the
people of this country, and so important in their bearing upon the
relations of the United States, of the several States to each
other, and to the citizens of the States and of the United States,
have been before this court during the official life of any of its
present members. We have given every opportunity for a full hearing
at the bar; we have discussed it freely and compared views among
ourselves; we have taken ample time for careful deliberation, and
we now propose to announce the judgments which we have formed in
the construction of those articles, so far as we have found them
necessary to the decision of the cases before us, and beyond that,
we have neither the inclination nor the right to go.

															Twelve articles of amendment were added to the Federal
Constitution soon after the original organization of the government
under it in 1789. Of these, all but the last were adopted so soon
afterwards as to justify the statement that they were practically
contemporaneous with the adoption of the original; and the twelfth,
adopted in eighteen hundred and three, was so nearly so as to have
become, like all the others, historical and of another age. But
within the first eight years, three other articles of amendment of
vast importance have been added by the voice of the people to that
now venerable instrument.

															The most cursory glance at these articles discloses a unity of
purpose, when taken in connection with the history of the times,
which cannot fail to have an important bearing on any question of
doubt concerning their true meaning. Nor can such doubts, when any
reasonably exist, be safely and rationally solved without a
reference to that history, for in it is found the occasion and the
necessity for recurring again to the great source of power in this
country, the people of the States, for additional guarantees of
human rights, Page 83 U. S. 68 additional powers to the Federal government; additional
restraints upon those of the States. Fortunately, that history is
fresh within the memory of us all, and its leading features, as
they bear upon the matter before us, free from doubt.

															The institution of African slavery, as it existed in about half
the States of the Union, and the contests pervading the public mind
for many years between those who desired its curtailment and
ultimate extinction and those who desired additional safeguards for
its security and perpetuation, culminated in the effort, on the
part of most of the States in which slavery existed, to separate
from the Federal government and to resist its authority. This
constituted the war of the rebellion, and whatever auxiliary causes
may have contributed to bring about this war, undoubtedly the
overshadowing and efficient cause was African slavery.

															In that struggle, slavery, as a, legalized social relation,
perished. It perished as a necessity of the bitterness and force of
the conflict. When the armies of freedom found themselves upon the
soil of slavery, they could do nothing less than free the poor
victims whose enforced servitude was the foundation of the quarrel.
And when hard-pressed in the contest, these men (for they proved
themselves men in that terrible crisis) offered their services and
were accepted by thousands to aid in suppressing the unlawful
rebellion, slavery was at an end wherever the Federal government
succeeded in that purpose. The proclamation of President Lincoln
expressed an accomplished fact as to a large portion of the
insurrectionary districts when he declared slavery abolished in
them all. But the war being over, those who had succeeded in
reestablishing the authority of the Federal government were not
content to permit this great act of emancipation to rest on the
actual results of the contest or the proclamation of the Executive,
both of which might have been questioned in after times, and they
determined to place this main and most valuable result in the
Constitution of the restored Union as one of its fundamental
articles. Hence, the thirteenth article of amendment of that
instrument. Page 83 U. S. 69 Its two short sections seem hardly to admit of construction, so
vigorous is their expression and so appropriate to the purpose we
have indicated.

															"1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a
punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly
convicted, shall exist within the United States or any place
subject to their jurisdiction."

															"2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by
appropriate legislation."

															To withdraw the mind from the contemplation of this grand yet
simple declaration of the personal freedom of all the human race
within the jurisdiction of this government -- a declaration
designed to establish the freedom of four millions of slaves -- and
with a microscopic search endeavor to find in it a reference to
servitudes which may have been attached to property in certain
localities requires an effort, to say the least of it.

															That a personal servitude was meant is proved by the use of the
word "involuntary," which can only apply to human beings. The
exception of servitude as a punishment for crime gives an idea of
the class of servitude that is meant. The word servitude is of
larger meaning than slavery, as the latter is popularly understood
in this country, and the obvious purpose was to forbid all shades
and conditions of African slavery. It was very well understood
that, in the form of apprenticeship for long terms, as it had been
practiced in the West India Islands, on the abolition of slavery by
the English government, or by reducing the slaves to the condition
of serfs attached to the plantation, the purpose of the article
might have been evaded if only the word slavery had been used. The
case of the apprentice slave, held under a law of Maryland,
liberated by Chief Justice Chase on a writ of habeas corpus under
this article, illustrates this course of observation. [ Footnote 10 ] And it is all that we
deem necessary to say on the application of that article to the
statute of Louisiana, now under consideration. Page 83 U. S. 70 The process of restoring to their proper relations with the
Federal government and with the other States those which had sided
with the rebellion, undertaken under the proclamation of President
Johnson in 1865 and before the assembling of Congress, developed
the fact that, notwithstanding the formal recognition by those
States of the abolition of slavery, the condition of the slave race
would, without further protection of the Federal government, be
almost as bad as it was before. Among the first acts of legislation
adopted by several of the States in the legislative bodies which
claimed to be in their normal relations with the Federal government
were laws which imposed upon the colored race onerous disabilities
and burdens and curtailed their rights in the pursuit of life,
liberty, and property to such an extent that their freedom was of
little value, while they had lost the protection which they had
received from their former owners from motives both of interest and
humanity.

															They were in some States forbidden to appear in the towns in any
other character than menial servants. They were required to reside
on and cultivate the soil without the right to purchase or own it.
They were excluded from many occupations of gain, and were not
permitted to give testimony in the courts in any case where a white
man was a party. It was said that their lives were at the mercy of
bad men, either because the laws for their protection were
insufficient or were not enforced.

															These circumstances, whatever of falsehood or misconception may
have been mingled with their presentation, forced upon the
statesmen who had conducted the Federal government in safety
through the crisis of the rebellion, and who supposed that, by the
thirteenth article of amendment, they had secured the result of
their labors, the conviction that something more was necessary in
the way of constitutional protection to the unfortunate race who
had suffered so much. They accordingly passed through Congress the
proposition for the fourteenth amendment, and they declined to
treat as restored to their full participation in the government of
the Union the States which had been in insurrection until they Page 83 U. S. 71 ratified that article by a formal vote of their legislative
bodies.

															Before we proceed to examine more critically the provisions of
this amendment, on which the plaintiffs in error rely, let us
complete and dismiss the history of the recent amendments, as that
history relates to the general purpose which pervades them all. A
few years' experience satisfied the thoughtful men who had been the
authors of the other two amendments that, notwithstanding the
restraints of those articles on the States and the laws passed
under the additional powers granted to Congress, these were
inadequate for the protection of life, liberty, and property,
without which freedom to the slave was no boon. They were in all
those States denied the right of suffrage. The laws were
administered by the white man alone. It was urged that a race of
men distinctively marked, as was the negro, living in the midst of
another and dominant race, could never be fully secured in their
person and their property without the right of suffrage.

															Hence, the fifteenth amendment, which declares that

															"the right of a citizen of the United States to vote shall not
be denied or abridged by any State on account of race, color, or
previous condition of servitude."

															The negro having, by the fourteenth amendment, been declared to
be a citizen of the United States, is thus made a voter in every
State of the Union.

															We repeat, then, in the light of this recapitulation of events,
almost too recent to be called history, but which are familiar to
us all, and on the most casual examination of the language of these
amendments, no one can fail to be impressed with the one pervading
purpose found in them all, lying at the foundation of each, and
without which none of them would have been even suggested; we mean
the freedom of the slave race, the security and firm establishment
of that freedom, and the protection of the newly made freeman and
citizen from the oppressions of those who had formerly exercised
unlimited dominion over him. It is true that only the fifteenth
amendment, in terms, Page 83 U. S. 72 mentions the negro by speaking of his color and his slavery. But
it is just as true that each of the other articles was addressed to
the grievances of that race, and designed to remedy them as the
fifteenth.

															We do not say that no one else but the negro can share in this
protection. Both the language and spirit of these articles are to
have their fair and just weight in any question of construction.
Undoubtedly while negro slavery alone was in the mind of the
Congress which proposed the thirteenth article, it forbids any
other kind of slavery, now or hereafter. If Mexican peonage or the
Chinese coolie labor system shall develop slavery of the Mexican of
Chinese race within our territory, this amendment may safely be
trusted to make it void. And so, if other rights are assailed by
the States which properly and necessarily fall within the
protection of these articles, that protection will apply, though
the party interested may not be of African descent. But what we do
say, and what we wish to be understood, is that, in any fair and
just construction of any section or phrase of these amendments, it
is necessary to look to the purpose which we have said was the
pervading spirit of them all, the evil which they were designed to
remedy, and the process of continued addition to the Constitution,
until that purpose was supposed to be accomplished as far as
constitutional law can accomplish it.

															The first section of the fourteenth article to which our
attention is more specially invited opens with a definition of
citizenship -- not only citizenship of the United States, but
citizenship of the States. No such definition was previously found
in the Constitution, nor had any attempt been made to define it by
act of Congress. It had been the occasion of much discussion in the
courts, by the executive departments, and in the public journals.
It had been said by eminent judges that no man was a citizen of the
United States except as he was a citizen of one of the States
composing the Union. Those, therefore, who had been born and
resided always in the District of Columbia or in the Territories,
though within the United States, were not citizens. Whether Page 83 U. S. 73 this proposition was sound or not had never been judicially
decided. But it had been held by this court, in the celebrated Dred Scott case, only a few years before the outbreak of
the civil war, that a man of African descent, whether a slave or
not, was not and could not be a citizen of a State or of the United
States. This decision, while it met the condemnation of some of the
ablest statesmen and constitutional lawyers of the country, had
never been overruled, and if was to be accepted as a constitutional
limitation of the right of citizenship, then all the negro race who
had recently been made freemen were still not only not citizens,
but were incapable of becoming so by anything short of an amendment
to the Constitution.

															To remove this difficulty primarily, and to establish clear and
comprehensive definition of citizenship which should declare what
should constitute citizenship of the United States and also
citizenship of a State, the first clause of the first section was
framed.

															"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and
subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United
States and of the State wherein they reside."

															The first observation we have to make on this clause is that it
puts at rest both the questions which we stated to have been the
subject of differences of opinion. It declares that persons may be
citizens of the United States without regard to their citizenship
of a particular State, and it overturns the Dred Scott decision by making all persons born within the United States and
subject to its jurisdiction citizens of the United States. That its
main purpose was to establish the citizenship of the negro can
admit of no doubt. The phrase, "subject to its jurisdiction" was
intended to exclude from its operation children of ministers,
consuls, and citizens or subjects of foreign States born within the
United States.

															The next observation is more important in view of the arguments
of counsel in the present case. It is that the distinction between
citizenship of the United States and citizenship of a State is
clearly recognized and established. Page 83 U. S. 74 Not only may a man be a citizen of the United States without
being a citizen of a State, but an important element is necessary
to convert the former into the latter. He must reside within the
State to make him a citizen of it, but it is only necessary that he
should be born or naturalized in the United States to be a citizen
of the Union.

															It is quite clear, then, that there is a citizenship of the
United States, and a citizenship of a State, which are distinct
from each other, and which depend upon different characteristics or
circumstances in the individual.

															We think this distinction and its explicit recognition in this
amendment of great weight in this argument, because the next
paragraph of this same section, which is the one mainly relied on
by the plaintiffs in error, speaks only of privileges and
immunities of citizens of the United States, and does not speak of
those of citizens of the several States. The argument, however, in
favor of the plaintiffs rests wholly on the assumption that the
citizenship is the same, and the privileges and immunities
guaranteed by the clause are the same.

															The language is, "No State shall make or enforce any law which
shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the
United States. " It is a little remarkable, if this clause was
intended as a protection to the citizen of a State against the
legislative power of his own State, that the word citizen of the
State should be left out when it is so carefully used, and used in
contradistinction to citizens of the United States in the very
sentence which precedes it. It is too clear for argument that the
change in phraseology was adopted understandingly and, with a
purpose.

															Of the privileges and immunities of the citizen of the United
States, and of the privileges and immunities of the citizen of the
State, and what they respectively are, we will presently consider;
but we wish to state here that it is only the former which are
placed by this clause under the protection of the Federal
Constitution, and that the latter, whatever they may be, are not
intended to have any additional protection by this paragraph of the
amendment. Page 83 U. S. 75 If, then, there is a difference between the privileges and
immunities belonging to a citizen of the United States as such and
those belonging to the citizen of the State as such, the latter
must rest for their security and protection where they have
heretofore rested, for they are not embraced by this paragraph of
the amendment.

															The first occurrence of the words "privileges and immunities" in
our constitutional history is to be found in the fourth of the
articles of the old Confederation.

															It declares

															"that the better to secure and perpetuate mutual friendship and
intercourse among the people of the different States in this Union,
the free inhabitants of each of these States, paupers, vagabonds,
and fugitives from justice excepted, shall be entitled to all the
privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several States,
and the people of each State shall have free ingress and regress to
and from any other State, and shall enjoy therein all the
privileges of trade and commerce, subject to the same duties,
impositions, and restrictions as the inhabitants thereof
respectively."

															In the Constitution of the United States, which superseded the
Articles of Confederation, the corresponding provision is found in
section two of the fourth article, in the following words: "The
citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and
immunities of citizens of the several States."

															There can be but little question that the purpose of both these
provisions is the same, and that the privileges and immunities
intended are the same in each. In the article of the Confederation,
we have some of these specifically mentioned, and enough perhaps to
give some general idea of the class of civil rights meant by the
phrase.

															Fortunately, we are not without judicial construction of this
clause of the Constitution. The first and the leading case on the
subject is that of Corfield v. Coryell, decided by Mr.
Justice Washington in the Circuit Court for the District of
Pennsylvania in 1823. [ Footnote
11 ] Page 83 U. S. 76 "The inquiry," he says,

															"is what are the privileges and immunities of citizens of the
several States? We feel no hesitation in confining these
expressions to those privileges and immunities which are
fundamental; which belong of right to the citizens of all free
governments, and which have at all times been enjoyed by citizens
of the several States which compose this Union, from the time of
their becoming free, independent, and sovereign. What these
fundamental principles are it would be more tedious than difficult
to enumerate. They may all, however, be comprehended under the
following general heads: protection by the government, with the
right to acquire and possess property of every kind and to pursue
and obtain happiness and safety, subject, nevertheless, to such
restraints as the government may prescribe for the general good of
the whole."

															This definition of the privileges and immunities of citizens of
the States is adopted in the main by this court in the recent case
of Ward v. The State of Maryland, [ Footnote 12 ] while it declines to undertake an
authoritative definition beyond what was necessary to that
decision. The description, when taken to include others not named,
but which are of the same general character, embraces nearly every
civil right for the establishment and protection of which organized
government is instituted. They are, in the language of Judge
Washington, those rights which are fundamental. Throughout his
opinion, they are spoken of as rights belonging to the individual
as a citizen of a State. They are so spoken of in the
constitutional provision which he was construing. And they have
always been held to be the class of rights which the State
governments were created to establish and secure.

															In the case of Paul v. Virginia, [ Footnote 13 ] the court, in expounding this
clause of the Constitution, says that

															"the privileges and immunities secured to citizens of each State
in the several States by the provision in question are those
privileges and immunities which are common to the citizens in the
latter Page 83 U. S. 77 States under the constitution and laws by virtue of their being
citizens."

															The constitutional provision there alluded to did not create
those rights, which it called privileges and immunities of citizens
of the States. It threw around them in that clause no security for
the citizen of the State in which they were claimed or exercised.
Nor did it profess to control the power of the State governments
over the rights of its own citizens.

															Its sole purpose was to declare to the several States that,
whatever those rights, as you grant or establish them to your own
citizens, or as you limit or qualify or impose restrictions on
their exercise, the same, neither more nor less, shall be the
measure of the rights of citizens of other States within your
jurisdiction.

															It would be the vainest show of learning to attempt to prove by
citations of authority that, up to the adoption of the recent
amendments, no claim or pretence was set up that those rights
depended on the Federal government for their existence or
protection beyond the very few express limitations which the
Federal Constitution imposed upon the States -- such, for instance,
as the prohibition against ex post facto laws, bills of
attainder, and laws impairing the obligation of contracts. But,
with the exception of these and a few other restrictions, the
entire domain of the privileges and immunities of citizens of the
States, as above defined, lay within the constitutional and
legislative power of the States, and without that of the Federal
government. Was it the purpose of the fourteenth amendment, by the
simple declaration that no State should make or enforce any law
which shall abridge the privileges and immunities of citizens of
the United States, to transfer the security and protection of all
the civil rights which we have mentioned, from the States to the
Federal government? And where it is declared that Congress Shall
have the power to enforce that article, was it intended to bring
within the power of Congress the entire domain of civil rights
heretofore belonging exclusively to the States?

															All this and more must follow if the proposition of the Page 83 U. S. 78 plaintiffs in error be sound. For not only are these rights
subject to the control of Congress whenever, in its discretion, any
of them are supposed to be abridged by State legislation, but that
body may also pass laws in advance, limiting and restricting the
exercise of legislative power by the States, in their most ordinary
and usual functions, as in its judgment it may think proper on all
such subjects. And still further, such a construction followed by
the reversal of the judgments of the Supreme Court of Louisiana in
these cases, would constitute this court a perpetual censor upon
all legislation of the States, on the civil rights of their own
citizens, with authority to nullify such as it did not approve as
consistent with those rights, as they existed at the time of the
adoption of this amendment. The argument, we admit, is not always
the most conclusive which is drawn from the consequences urged
against the adoption of a particular construction of an instrument.
But when, as in the case before us, these consequences are so
serious, so far-reaching and pervading, so great a departure from
the structure and spirit of our institutions; when the effect is to
fetter and degrade the State governments by subjecting them to the
control of Congress in the exercise of powers heretofore
universally conceded to them of the most ordinary and fundamental
character; when, in fact, it radically changes the whole theory of
the relations of the State and Federal governments to each other
and of both these governments to the people, the argument has a
force that is irresistible in the absence of language which
expresses such a purpose too clearly to admit of doubt.

															We are convinced that no such results were intended by the
Congress which proposed these amendments, nor by the legislatures
of the States which ratified them.

															Having shown that the privileges and immunities relied on in the
argument are those which belong to citizens of the States as such,
and that they are left to the State governments for security and
protection, and not by this article placed under the special care
of the Federal government, we may hold ourselves excused from
defining the privileges Page 83 U. S. 79 and immunities of citizens of the United States which no State
can abridge until some case involving those privileges may make it
necessary to do so.

															But lest it should be said that no such privileges and
immunities are to he found if those we have been considering are
excluded, we venture to suggest some which owe their existence to
the Federal government, its national character, its Constitution,
or its laws.

															One of these is well described in the case of Crandall v.
Nevada. [ Footnote 14 ]
It is said to be the right of the citizen of this great country,
protected by implied guarantees of its Constitution,

															"to come to the seat of government to assert any claim he may
have upon that government, to transact any business he may have
with it, to seek its protection, to share its offices, to engage in
administering its functions. He has the right of free access to its
seaports, through which operations of foreign commerce are
conducted, to the sub-treasuries, land offices, and courts of
justice in the several States."

															And quoting from the language of Chief Justice Taney in another
case, it is said

															"that, for all the great purposes for which the Federal
government was established, we are one people, with one common
country, we are all citizens of the United States; "

															and it is, as such citizens, that their rights are supported in
this court in Crandall v. Nevada. Another privilege of a citizen of the United States is to demand
the care and protection of the Federal government over his life,
liberty, and property when on the high seas or within the
jurisdiction of a foreign government. Of this there can be no
doubt, nor that the right depends upon his character as a citizen
of the United States. The right to peaceably assemble and petition
for redress of grievances, the privilege of the writ of habeas
corpus, are rights of the citizen guaranteed by the Federal
Constitution. The right to use the navigable waters of the United
States, however they may penetrate the territory of the several
States, all rights secured to our citizens by treaties with foreign
nations, Page 83 U. S. 80 are dependent upon citizenship of the United States, and not
citizenship of a State. One of these privileges is conferred by the
very article under consideration. It is that a citizen of the
United States can, of his own volition, become a citizen of any
State of the Union by a bona fide residence therein, with
the same rights as other citizens of that State. To these may be
added the rights secured by the thirteenth and fifteenth articles
of amendment, and by the other clause of the fourteenth, next to be
considered.

															But it is useless to pursue this branch of the inquiry, since we
are of opinion that the rights claimed by these plaintiffs in
error, if they have any existence, are not privileges and
immunities of citizens of the United States within the meaning of
the clause of the thirteenth amendment under consideration.

															"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and
subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United
States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or
enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of
citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any
person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law,
nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection
of its laws."

															The argument has not been much pressed in these cases that the
defendant's charter deprives the plaintiffs of their property
without due process of law, or that it denies to them the equal
protection of the law. The first of these paragraphs has been in
the Constitution since the adoption of the fifth amendment, as a
restraint upon the Federal power. It is also to be found in some
form of expression in the constitutions of nearly all the States as
a restraint upon the power of the States. This law, then, has
practically been the same as it now is during the existence of the
government, except so far as the present amendment may place the
restraining power over the States in this matter in the hands of
the Federal government.

															We are not without judicial interpretation, therefore, both
State and National, of the meaning of this clause. And it Page 83 U. S. 81 is sufficient to say that under no construction of that
provision that we have ever seen, or any that we deem admissible,
can the restraint imposed by the State of Louisiana upon the
exercise of their trade by the butchers of New Orleans be held to
be a deprivation of property within the meaning of that
provision.

															"Nor shall any State deny to any person within its jurisdiction
the equal protection of the laws."

															In the light of the history of these amendments, and the
pervading purpose of them, which we have already discussed, it is
not difficult to give a meaning to this clause. The existence of
laws in the States where the newly emancipated negroes resided,
which discriminated with gross injustice and hardship against them
as a class, was the evil to be remedied by this clause, and by it
such laws are forbidden.

															If, however, the States did not conform their laws to its
requirements, then by the fifth section of the article of amendment
Congress was authorized to enforce it by suitable legislation. We
doubt very much whether any action of a State not directed by way
of discrimination against the negroes as a class, or on account of
their race, will ever be held to come within the purview of this
provision. It is so clearly a provision for that race and that
emergency that a strong case would be necessary for its application
to any other. But as it is a State that is to be dealt with, and
not alone the validity of its laws, we may safely leave that matter
until Congress shall have exercised its power, or some case of
State oppression, by denial of equal justice in its courts, shall
have claimed a decision at our hands. We find no such case in the
one before us, and do not deem it necessary to go over the argument
again, as it may have relation to this particular clause of the
amendment.

															In the early history of the organization of the government, its
statesmen seem to have divided on the line which should separate
the powers of the National government from those of the State
governments, and though this line has Page 83 U. S. 82 never been very well defined in public opinion, such a division
has continued from that day to this.

															The adoption of the first eleven amendments to the Constitution
so soon after the original instrument was accepted shows a
prevailing sense of danger at that time from the Federal power. And
it cannot be denied that such a jealousy continued to exist with
many patriotic men until the breaking out of the late civil war. It
was then discovered that the true danger to the perpetuity of the
Union was in the capacity of the State organizations to combine and
concentrate all the powers of the State, and of contiguous States,
for a determined resistance to the General Government.

															Unquestionably this has given great force to the argument, and
added largely to the number of those who believe in the necessity
of a strong National government.

															But, however pervading this sentiment, and however it may have
contributed to the adoption of the amendments we have been
considering, we do not see in those amendments any purpose to
destroy the main features of the general system. Under the pressure
of all the excited feeling growing out of the war, our statesmen
have still believed that the existence of the State with powers for
domestic and local government, including the regulation of civil
rights the rights of person and of property was essential to the
perfect working of our complex form of government, though they have
thought proper to impose additional limitations on the States, and
to confer additional power on that of the Nation.

															But whatever fluctuations may be seen in the history of public
opinion on this subject during the period of our national
existence, we think it will be found that this court, so far as its
functions required, has always held with a steady and an even hand
the balance between State and Federal power, and we trust that such
may continue to be the history of its relation to that subject so
long as it shall have duties to perform which demand of it a
construction of the Constitution or of any of its parts. Page 83 U. S. 83 The judgments of the Supreme Court of Louisiana in these cases
are

															AFFIRMED.

															* The Butchers' Benevolent Association of New Orleans v. The
Crescent City Live-Stock Landing and Slaughter-House
Company. Paul Esteban, L. Ruch, J. P. Rouede, W. Maylie, S. Firmberg,
B. Beaubay, William Fagan, J. D. Broderick, N. Seibel, M. Lannes,
J. Gitzinger, J. P. Aycock, D. Verges, The Live-Stock Dealers' and
Butchers' Association of New Orleans, and Charles Cavaroc v. The
State of Louisiana, ex rel. S. Belden, Attorney-General. The Butchers' Benevolent Association of New Orleans v. The
Crescent City Live-Stock Landing and Slaughter-House
Company. [ Footnote 1 ] See infra, pp. 83 U. S. 85 , 83 U. S. 86 .

															[ Footnote 2 ]

															2 Commentaries 340.

															[ Footnote 3 ] Commonwealth v. Alger, 7 Cushing 84.

															[ Footnote 4 ] Thorpe v. Rutland and Burlington Railroad Co., 27
Vermont 149.

															[ Footnote 5 ] 22 U. S. 9 Wheaton 203.

															[ Footnote 6 ] 36 U. S. 11 Peters
102.

															[ Footnote 7 ] 72 U. S. 5 Wallace 471.

															[ Footnote 8 ] 76 U. S. 9 id., 41.

															[ Footnote 9 ] 17 U. S. 4 Wheaton
316.

															[ Footnote 10 ] Matter of Turner, 1 Abbott United States Reports
84.

															[ Footnote 11 ]

															4 Washington's Circuit Court 371.

															[ Footnote 12 ] 79 U. S. 12 Wallace 430.

															[ Footnote 13 ] 75 U. S. 8 id., 180.

															[ Footnote 14 ] 73 U. S. 6 Wallace 36.

															Mr. Justice FIELD, dissenting.

															I am unable to agree with the majority of the court in these
cases, and will proceed to state the reasons of my dissent from
their judgment.

															The cases grow out of the act of the legislature of the

															State of Louisiana, entitled

															"An act to protect the health of the city of New Orleans, to
locate the stock-landings and slaughterhouses, and to incorporate
'The Crescent City Live-Stock Landing and Slaughter-House
Company,'"

															which was approved on the eighth of March, 1869, and went into
operation on the first of June following. The act creates the
corporation mentioned in its title, which is composed of seventeen
persons designated by name, and invests them and their successors
with the powers usually conferred upon corporations in addition to
their special and exclusive privileges. It first declares that it
shall not be lawful, after the first day of June, 1869, to

															"land, keep, or slaughter any cattle, beeves, calves, sheep,
swine, or other animals, or to have, keep, or establish any
stock-landing, yards, slaughterhouses, or abattoirs within the city
of New Orleans or the parishes of Orleans, Jefferson, and St.
Bernard,"

															except as provided in the act, and imposes a penalty of two
hundred and fifty dollars for each violation of its provisions. It
then authorizes the corporation mentioned to establish and erect
within the parish of St. Bernard and the corporate limits of New
Orleans, below the United States barracks, on the east side of the
Mississippi, or at any point below a designated railroad depot on
the west side of the river,

															"wharves, stables, sheds, yards, and buildings, necessary to
land, stable, shelter, protect, and preserve all kinds of horses,
mules, cattle, and other animals,"

															and provides that cattle and other animals, destined for sale or
slaughter in the city of New Orleans or its environs shall be
landed at the landings and yards of the company, and be there Page 83 U. S. 84 yarded, sheltered, and protected, if necessary, and that the
company shall be entitled to certain prescribed fees for the use of
its wharves, and for each animal landed, and be authorized to
detain the animals until the fees are paid, and, if not paid within
fifteen days, to take proceedings for their sale. Every person
violating any of these provisions, or landing, yarding, or keeping
animals elsewhere, is subjected to a fine of two hundred and fifty
dollars.

															The act then requires the corporation to erect a grand
slaughterhouse of sufficient dimensions to accommodate all
butchers, and in which five hundred animals may be slaughtered a
day, with a sufficient number of sheds and stables for the stock
received at the port of New Orleans, at the same time authorizing
the company to erect other landing-places and other slaughterhouses
at any points consistent with the provisions of the act.

															The act then provides that, when the slaughterhouses and
accessory buildings have been completed and thrown open for use,
public notice thereof shall be given for thirty days, and within
that time,

															"all other stock-landings and slaughterhouses within the
parishes of Orleans, Jefferson, and St. Bernard shall be closed,
and it shall no longer be lawful to slaughter cattle, hogs, calves,
sheep, or goats, the meat of which is determined [destined] for
sale within the parishes aforesaid, under a penalty of one hundred
dollars for each and every offence."

															The act then provides that the company shall receive for every
animal slaughtered in its buildings certain prescribed fees,
besides the head, feet, gore, and entrails of all animals except of
swine.

															Other provisions of the act require the inspection of the
animals before they are slaughtered, and allow the construction of
railways to facilitate communication with the buildings of the
company and the city of New Orleans.

															But it is only the special and exclusive privileges conferred by
the act that this court has to consider in the cases before it.
These privileges are granted for the period of twenty-five years.
Their exclusive character not only follows Page 83 U. S. 85 from the provisions I have cited, but it is declared in express
terms in the act. In the third section, the language is that the
corporation

															"shall have the sole and exclusive privilege of conducting and
carrying on the livestock, landing, and slaughterhouse business
within the limits and privileges granted by the provisions of the
act."

															And in the fourth section, the language is that, after the first
of June, 1869, the company shall have

															"the exclusive privilege of having landed at their
landing-places all animals intended for sale or slaughter in the
parishes of Orleans and Jefferson,"

															and "the exclusive privilege of having slaughtered" in its
slaughterhouses all animals the meat of which is intended for sale
in these parishes.

															In order to understand the real character of these special
privileges, it is necessary to know the extent of country and of
population which they affect. The parish of Orleans contains an
area of country of 150 square miles; the parish of Jefferson 384
square miles, and the parish of St. Bernard 620 square miles. The
three parishes together contain an area of 1154 square miles, and
they have a population of between two and three hundred thousand
people.

															The plaintiffs in error deny the validity of the act in question
so far as it confers the special and exclusive privileges
mentioned. The first case before us was brought by an association
of butchers in the three parishes against the corporation to
prevent the assertion and enforcement of these privileges. The
second case was instituted by the attorney general of the State, in
the name of the State, to protect the corporation in the enjoyment
of these privileges and to prevent an association of stock dealers
and butchers from acquiring a tract of land in the same district
with the corporation upon which to erect suitable buildings for
receiving, keeping, and slaughtering cattle and preparing animal
food for market. The third case was commenced by the corporation
itself to restrain the defendants from carrying on a business
similar to its own in violation of its alleged exclusive
privileges.

															The substance of the averments of the plaintiffs in error Page 83 U. S. 86 is this: that, prior to the passage of the act in question, they
were engaged in the lawful and necessary business of procuring and
bringing to the parishes of Orleans, Jefferson, and St. Bernard
animals suitable for human food, and in preparing such food for
market; that, in the prosecution of this business, they had
provided in these parishes suitable establishments for landing,
sheltering, keeping, and slaughtering cattle and the sale of meat;
that, with their association about four hundred persons were
connected, and that, in the parishes named, about a thousand
persons were thus engaged in procuring, preparing, and selling
animal food. And they complain that the business of landing,
yarding, and keeping, within the parishes named, cattle intended
for sale or slaughter, which was lawful for them to pursue before
the first day of June, 1869, is made by that act unlawful for
anyone except the corporation named, and that the business of
slaughtering cattle and preparing animal food for market, which it
was lawful for them to pursue in these parishes before that day, is
made by that act unlawful for them to pursue afterwards except in
the buildings of the company, and upon payment of certain
prescribed fees, and a surrender of a valuable portion of each
animal slaughtered. And they contend that the lawful business of
landing, yarding, sheltering, and keeping cattle intended for sale
or slaughter, which they in common with every individual in the
community of the three parishes had a right to follow, cannot be
thus taken from them and given over for a period of twenty-five
years to the sole and exclusive enjoyment of a corporation of
seventeen persons or of anybody else. And they also contend that
the lawful and necessary business of slaughtering cattle and
preparing animal food for market, which they and all other
individuals had a right to follow, cannot be thus restricted within
this territory of 1154 square miles to the buildings of this
corporation, or be subjected to tribute for the emolument of that
body.

															No one will deny the abstract justice which lies in the position
of the plaintiffs in error, and I shall endeavor to Page 83 U. S. 87 show that the position has some support in the fundamental law
of the country.

															It is contended in justification for the act in question that it
was adopted in the interest of the city, to promote its cleanliness
and protect its health, and was the legitimate exercise of what is
termed the police power of the State. That power undoubtedly
extends to all regulations affecting the health, good order,
morals, peace, and safety of society, and is exercised on a great
variety of subjects, and in almost numberless ways. All sorts of
restrictions and burdens are imposed under it, and, when these are
not in conflict with any constitutional prohibitions or fundamental
principles, they cannot be successfully assailed in a judicial
tribunal. With this power of the State and its legitimate exercise
I shall not differ from the majority of the court. But under the
pretence of prescribing a police regulation, the State cannot be
permitted to encroach upon any of the just rights of the citizen,
which the Constitution intended to secure against abridgment.

															In the law in question there are only two provisions which can
properly be called police regulations -- the one which requires the
landing and slaughtering of animals below the city of New Orleans,
and the other which requires the inspection of the animals before
they are slaughtered. When these requirements are complied with,
the sanitary purposes of the act are accomplished. In all other
particulars, the act is a mere grant to a corporation created by it
of special and exclusive privileges by which the health of the city
is in no way promoted. It is plain that if the corporation can,
without endangering the health of the public, carry on the business
of landing, keeping, and slaughtering cattle within a district
below the city embracing an area of over a thousand square miles,
it would not endanger the public health if other persons were also
permitted to carry on the same business within the same district
under similar conditions as to the inspection of the animals. The
health of the city might require the removal from its limits and
suburbs of all buildings for keeping and slaughtering cattle, but
no such Page 83 U. S. 88 object could possibly justify legislation removing such
buildings from a large part of the State for the benefit of a
single corporation. The pretence of sanitary regulations for the
grant of the exclusive privileges is a shallow one which merits
only this passing notice.

															It is also sought to justify the act in question on the same
principle that exclusive grants for ferries, bridges, and turnpikes
are sanctioned. But it can find no support there. Those grants are
of franchises of a public character appertaining to the government.
Their use usually requires the exercise of the sovereign right of
eminent domain. It is for the government to determine when one of
them shall be granted, and the conditions upon which it shall be
enjoyed. It is the duty of the government to provide suitable
roads, bridges, and ferries for the convenience of the public, and
if it chooses to devolve this duty to any extent, or in any
locality, upon particular individuals or corporations, it may of
course stipulate for such exclusive privileges connected with the
franchise as it may deem proper, without encroaching upon the
freedom or the just rights of others. The grant, with exclusive
privileges, of a right thus appertaining to the government, is a
very different thing from a grant, with exclusive privileges, of a
right to pursue one of the ordinary trades or callings of life,
which is a right appertaining solely to the individual.

															Nor is there any analogy between this act of Louisiana and the
legislation which confers upon the inventor of a new and useful
improvement an exclusive right to make and sell to others his
invention. The government in this way only secures to the inventor
the temporary enjoyment of that which, without him, would not have
existed. It thus only recognizes in the inventor a temporary
property in the product of his own brain.

															The act of Louisiana presents the naked case, unaccompanied by
any public considerations, where a right to pursue a lawful and
necessary calling, previously enjoyed by every citizen, and in
connection with which a thousand persons were daily employed, is
taken away and vested exclusively Page 83 U. S. 89 for twenty-five years, for an extensive district and a large
population, in a single corporation, or its exercise is for that
period restricted to the establishments of the corporation, and
there allowed only upon onerous conditions.

															If exclusive privileges of this character can be granted to a
corporation of seventeen persons, they may, in the discretion of
the legislature, be equally granted to single individual. If they
may be granted for twenty-five years, they may be equally granted
for a century, and in perpetuity. If they may be granted for the
landing and keeping of animals intended for sale or slaughter, they
may be equally granted for the landing and storing of grain and
other products of the earth, or for any article of commerce. If
they may be granted for structures in which animal food is prepared
for market, they may be equally granted for structures in which
farinaceous or vegetable food is prepared. They may be granted for
any of the pursuits of human industry, even in its most simple and
common forms. Indeed, upon the theory on which the exclusive
privileges granted by the act in question are sustained, there is
no monopoly, in the most odious form, which may not be upheld.

															The question presented is, therefore, one of the gravest
importance not merely to the parties here, but to the whole
country. It is nothing less than the question whether the recent
amendments to the Federal Constitution protect the citizens of the
United States against the deprivation of their common rights by
State legislation. In my judgment, the fourteenth amendment does
afford such protection, and was so intended by the Congress which
framed and the States which adopted it.

															The counsel for the plaintiffs in error have contended with
great force that the act in question is also inhibited by the
thirteenth amendment.

															That amendment prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude,
except as a punishment for crime, but I have not supposed it was
susceptible of a construction which would cover the enactment in
question. I have been so accustomed to regard it as intended to
meet that form of slavery which had Page 83 U. S. 90 previously prevailed in this country, and to which the recent
civil war owed its existence, that I was not prepared, nor am I
yet, to give to it the extent and force ascribed by counsel. Still
it is evidence that the language of the amendment is not used in a
restrictive sense. It is not confined to African slavery alone. It
is general and universal in its application. Slavery of white men
as well as of black men is prohibited, and not merely slavery in
the strict sense of the term, but involuntary servitude in every
form.

															The words "involuntary servitude" have not been the subject of
any judicial or legislative exposition, that I am aware of, in this
country, except that which is found in the Civil Rights Act, which
will be hereafter noticed. It is, however, clear that they include
something more than slavery in the strict sense of the term; they
include also serfage, vassalage, villenage, peonage, and all other
forms of compulsory service for the mere benefit or pleasure of
others. Nor is this the full import of the terms. The abolition of
slavery and involuntary servitude was intended to make everyone
born in this country a freeman, and, as such, to give to him the
right to pursue the ordinary avocations of life without other
restraint than such as affects all others, and to enjoy equally
with them the fruits of his labor. A prohibition to him to pursue
certain callings, open to others of the same age, condition, and
sex, or to reside in places where others are permitted to live,
would so far deprive him of the rights of a freeman, and would
place him, as respects others, in a condition of servitude. A
person allowed to pursue only one trade or calling, and only in one
locality of the country, would not be, in the strict sense of the
term, in a condition of slavery, but probably none would deny that
he would be in a condition of servitude. He certainly would not
possess the liberties nor enjoy the privileges of a freeman. The
compulsion which would force him to labor even for his own benefit
only in one direction, or in one place, would be almost as
oppressive and nearly as great an invasion of his liberty as the
compulsion which would force him to labor for the benefit or
pleasure of another, Page 83 U. S. 91 and would equally constitute an element of servitude. The
counsel of the plaintiffs in error therefore contend that

															"wherever a law of a State, or a law of the United States, makes
a discrimination between classes of persons which deprives the one
class of their freedom or their property or which makes a caste of
them to subserve the power, pride, avarice, vanity, or vengeance of
others,"

															there involuntary servitude exists within the meaning of the
thirteenth amendment.

															It is not necessary, in my judgment, for the disposition of the
present case in favor of the plaintiffs in error, to accept as
entirely correct this conclusion of counsel. It, however, finds
support in the act of Congress known as the Civil Rights Act, which
was framed and adopted upon a construction of the thirteenth
amendment, giving to its language a similar breadth. That amendment
was ratified on the eighteenth of December, 1865, [ Footnote 2/1 ] and, in April of the following year,
the Civil Rights Act was passed. [ Footnote 2/2 ] Its first section declares that all
persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign
power, excluding Indians not taxed, are "citizens of the United
States," and that

															"such citizens, of every race and color, without regard to any
previous condition of slavery, or involuntary servitude, except as
a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly
convicted, shall have the same right in every State and Territory
in the United States to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be
parties, and give evidence, to inherit, purchase, lease, sell,
hold, and convey real and personal property, and to full and equal
benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and
property, as enjoyed by white citizens."

															This legislation was supported upon the theory that citizens of
the United States, as such, were entitled to the rights and
privileges enumerated, and that to deny to any such citizen
equality in these rights and privileges with others was, to the
extent of the denial, subjecting him to an involuntary Page 83 U. S. 92 servitude. Senator Trumbull, who drew the act and who was its
earnest advocate in the Senate, stated, on opening the discussion
upon it in that body, that the measure was intended to give effect
to the declaration of the amendment, and to secure to all persons
in the United States practical freedom. After referring to several
statutes passed in some of the Southern States discriminating
between the freedmen and white citizens, and after citing the
definition of civil liberty given by Blackstone, the Senator
said:

															"I take it that any statute which is not equal to all, and which
deprives any citizen of civil rights which are secured to other
citizens, is an unjust encroachment upon his liberty, and it is in
fact a badge of servitude which by the Constitution is prohibited.
[ Footnote 2/3 ]"

															By the act of Louisiana, within the three parishes named, a
territory exceeding one thousand one hundred square miles, and
embracing over two hundred thousand people, every man who pursues
the business of preparing animal food for market must take his
animals to the buildings of the favored company, and must perform
his work in them, and for the use of the buildings must pay a
prescribed tribute to the company, and leave with it a valuable
portion of each animal slaughtered. Every man in these parishes who
has a horse or other animal for sale must carry him to the yards
and stables of this company and for their use pay a like tribute.
He is not allowed to do his work in his own buildings, or to take
his animals to his own stables or keep them in his own yards, even
though they should be erected in the same district as the
buildings, stables, and yards of the company, and that district
embraces over eleven hundred square miles. The prohibitions imposed
by this act upon butchers and dealers in cattle in these parishes,
and the special privileges conferred upon the favored corporation,
are similar in principle and as odious in character as the
restrictions imposed in the last century upon the peasantry in some
parts of France, where, as says a French Page 83 U. S. 93 writer, the peasant was prohibited

															"to hunt on his own lands, to fish in his own waters, to grind
at his own mill, to cook at his own oven, to dry his clothes on his
own machines, to whet his instruments at his own grindstone, to
make his own wine, his oil, and his cider at his own press, . . .
or to sell his commodities at the public market."

															The exclusive right to all these privileges was vested in the
lords of the vicinage. "The history of the most execrable tyranny
of ancient times," says the same writer, "offers nothing like this.
This category of oppressions cannot be applied to a free man, or to
the peasant, except in violation of his rights."

															But if the exclusive privileges conferred upon the Louisiana
corporation can be sustained, it is not perceived why exclusive
privileges for the construction and keeping of ovens, machines,
grindstones, wine-presses, and for all the numerous trades and
pursuits for the prosecution of which buildings are required, may
not be equally bestowed upon other corporations or private
individuals, and for periods of indefinite duration.

															It is not necessary, however, as I have said, to rest my
objections to the act in question upon the terms and meaning of the
thirteenth amendment. The provisions of the fourteenth amendment,
which is properly a supplement to the thirteenth, cover, in my
judgment, the case before us, and inhibit any legislation which
confers special and exclusive privileges like these under
consideration. The amendment was adopted to obviate objections
which had been raised and pressed with great force to the validity
of the Civil Rights Act, and to place the common rights of American
citizens under the protection of the National government. It first
declares that

															"all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and
subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United
States and of the State wherein they reside."

															It then declares that

															"no State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the
privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, nor
shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property,
without due Page 83 U. S. 94 process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction
the equal protection of the laws."

															The first clause of this amendment determines who are citizens
of the United States, and how their citizenship is created. Before
its enactment, there was much diversity of opinion among jurists
and statesmen whether there was any such citizenship independent of
that of the State, and, if any existed, as to the manner in which
it originated. With a great number, the opinion prevailed that
there was no such citizenship independent of the citizenship of the
State. Such was the opinion of Mr. Calhoun and the class
represented by him. In his celebrated speech in the Senate upon the
Force Bill in 1833, referring to the reliance expressed by a
senator upon the fact that we are citizens of the United States, he
said:

															"If by citizen of the United States he means a citizen at large,
one whose citizenship extends to the entire geographical limits of
the country without having a local citizenship in some State or
Territory, a sort of citizen of the world, all I have to say is
that such a citizen would be a perfect nondescript; that not a
single individual of this description can be found in the entire
mass of our population. Notwithstanding all the pomp and display of
eloquence on the occasion, every citizen is a citizen of some State
or Territory, and, as such, under an express provision of the
Constitution, is entitled to all privileges and immunities of
citizens in the several States; and it is in this and no other
sense that we are citizens of the United States. [ Footnote 2/4 ]"

															In the Dred Scott case, this subject of citizenship of the
United States was fully and elaborately discussed. The exposition
in the opinion of Mr. Justice Curtis has been generally accepted by
the profession of the country as the one containing the soundest
views of constitutional law. And he held that, under the
Constitution, citizenship of the United States in reference to
natives was dependent upon citizenship in the several States, under
their constitutions and laws. Page 83 U. S. 95 The Chief Justice, in that case, and a majority of the court
with him, held that the words "people of the United States" and
"citizens" were synonymous terms; that the people of the respective
States were the parties to the Constitution; that these people
consisted of the free inhabitants of those States; that they had
provided in their Constitution for the adoption of a uniform rule
of naturalization; that they and their descendants and persons
naturalized were the only persons who could be citizens of the
United States, and that it was not in the power of any State to
invest any other person with citizenship so that he could enjoy the
privileges of a citizen under the Constitution, and that therefore
the descendants of persons brought to this country and sold as
slaves were not, and could not be, citizens within the meaning of
the Constitution.

															The first clause of the fourteenth amendment changes this whole
subject, and removes it from the region of discussion and doubt. It
recognizes in express terms, if it does not create, citizens of the
United States, and it makes their citizenship dependent upon the
place of their birth, or the fact of their adoption, and not upon
the constitution or laws of any State or the condition of their
ancestry. A citizen of a State is now only a citizen of the United
States residing in that State. The fundamental rights, privileges,
and immunities which belong to him as a free man and a free citizen
now belong to him as a citizen of the United States, and are not
dependent upon his citizenship of any State. The exercise of these
rights and privileges, and the degree of enjoyment received from
such exercise, are always more or less affected by the condition
and the local institutions of the State, or city, or town where he
resides. They are thus affected in a State by the wisdom of its
laws, the ability of its officers, the efficiency of its
magistrates, the education and morals of its people, and by many
other considerations. This is a result which follows from the
constitution of society, and can never be avoided, but in no other
way can they be affected by the action of the State, or by the
residence of the citizen therein. They do not derive Page 83 U. S. 96 their existence from its legislation, and cannot be destroyed by
its power.

															The amendment does not attempt to confer any new privileges or
immunities upon citizens, or to enumerate or define those already
existing. It assumes that there are such privileges and immunities
which belong of right to citizens as such, and ordains that they
shall not be abridged by State legislation. If this inhibition has
no reference to privileges and immunities of this character, but
only refers, as held by the majority of the court in their opinion,
to such privileges and immunities as were before its adoption
specially designated in the Constitution or necessarily implied as
belonging to citizens of the United States, it was a vain and idle
enactment, which accomplished nothing and most unnecessarily
excited Congress and the people on its passage. With privileges and
immunities thus designated or implied no State could ever have
interfered by its laws, and no new constitutional provision was
required to inhibit such interference. The supremacy of the
Constitution and the laws of the United States always controlled
any State legislation of that character. But if the amendment
refers to the natural and inalienable rights which belong to all
citizens, the inhibition has a profound significance and
consequence.

															What, then, are the privileges and immunities which are secured
against abridgment by State legislation?

															In the first section of the Civil Rights Act, Congress has given
its interpretation to these terms, or at least has stated some of
the rights which, in its judgment, these terms include; it has
there declared that they include the right

															"to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties and give
evidence, to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real
and personal property, and to full and equal benefit of all laws
and proceedings for the security of person and property."

															That act, it is true, was passed before the fourteenth
amendment, but the amendment was adopted, as I have already said,
to obviate objections to the act, or, speaking more accurately, I
should say, to obviate objections to legislation Page 83 U. S. 97 of a similar character, extending the protection of the National
government over the common rights of all citizens of the United
States. Accordingly, after its ratification, Congress reenacted the
act under the belief that whatever doubts may have previously
existed of its validity, they were removed by the amendment.
[ Footnote 2/5 ]

															The terms "privileges" and "immunities" are not new in the
amendment; they were in the Constitution before the amendment was
adopted. They are found in the second section of the fourth
article, which declares that "the citizens of each State shall be
entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the
several States," and they have been the subject of frequent
consideration in judicial decisions. In Corfield v.
Coryell, [ Footnote 2/6 ] Mr.
Justice Washington said he had

															"no hesitation in confining these expressions to those
privileges and immunities which were, in their nature, fundamental,
which belong of right to citizens of all free governments, and
which have at all times been enjoyed by the citizens of the several
States which compose the Union, from the time of their becoming
free, independent, and sovereign;"

															and, in considering what those fundamental privileges were, he
said that perhaps it would be more tedious than difficult to
enumerate them, but that they might be

															"all comprehended under the following general heads: protection
by the government; the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the
right to acquire and possess property of every kind, and to pursue
and obtain happiness and safety, subject, nevertheless, to such
restraints as the government may justly prescribe for the general
good of the whole."

															This appears to me to be a sound construction of the clause in
question. The privileges and immunities designated are those which
of right belong to the citizens of all free governments. Clearly
among these must be placed the right to pursue a lawful employment
in a lawful manner, without other restraint than such as equally
affects all persons. In the discussions Page 83 U. S. 98 in Congress upon the passage of the Civil Rights Act, repeated
reference was made to this language of Mr. Justice Washington. It
was cited by Senator Trumbull with the observation that it
enumerated the very rights belonging to a citizen of the United
States set forth in the first section of the act, and with the
statement that all persons born in the United States, being
declared by the act citizens of the United States, would
thenceforth be entitled to the rights of citizens, and that these
were the great fundamental rights set forth in the act; and that
they were set forth "as appertaining to every freeman."

															The privileges and immunities designated in the second section
of the fourth article of the Constitution are, then, according to
the decision cited, those which of right belong to the citizens of
all free governments, and they can be enjoyed under that clause by
the citizens of each State in the several States upon the same
terms and conditions as they are enjoyed by the citizens of the
latter States. No discrimination can be made by one State against
the citizens of other States in their enjoyment, nor can any
greater imposition be levied than such as is laid upon its own
citizens. It is a clause which insures equality in the enjoyment of
these rights between citizens of the several States whilst in the
same State.

															Nor is there anything in the opinion in the case of Paul v.
Virginia, [ Footnote 2/7 ] which
at all militates against these views, as is supposed by the
majority of the court. The act of Virginia of 1866 which was under
consideration in that case provided that no insurance company not
incorporated under the laws of the State should carry on its
business within the State without previously obtaining a license
for that purpose, and that it should not receive such license until
it had deposited with the treasurer of the State bonds of a
specified character, to an amount varying from thirty to fifty
thousand dollars. No such deposit was required of insurance
companies incorporated by the State, for carrying on Page 83 U. S. 99 their business within the State; and in the case cited, the
validity of the discriminating provisions of the statute of
Virginia between her own corporations and the corporations of other
States was assailed. It was contended that the statute in this
particular was in conflict with that clause of the Constitution
which declares that "the citizens of each State shall be entitled
to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several
States." But the court answered, that corporations were not
citizens within the meaning of this clause; that the term citizens
as there used applied only to natural persons, members of the body
politic owing allegiance to the State, not to artificial persons
created by the legislature and possessing only the attributes which
the legislature had prescribed; that, though it had been held that
where contracts or rights of property were to be enforced by or
against a corporation, the courts of the United States would, for
the purpose of maintaining jurisdiction, consider the corporation
as representing citizens of the State, under the laws of which it
was created, and to this extent would treat a corporation was a
citizen within the provision of the Constitution extending the
judicial power of the United States to controversies between
citizens of different States, it had never been held in any case
which had come under its observation, either in the State or
Federal courts, that a corporation was a citizen within the meaning
of the clause in question, entitling the citizens of each State to
the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States.
And the court observed that the privileges and immunities secured
by that provision were those privileges and immunities which were
common to the citizens in the latter States, under their
constitution and laws, by virtue of their being citizens; that
special privileges enjoyed by citizens in their own States were not
secured in other States by the provision; that it was not intended
by it to give to the laws of one State any operation in other
States; that they could have no such operation except by the
permission, expressed or implied, of those States; and that the
special privileges which they conferred must, therefore, be enjoyed
at home unless the assent Page 83 U. S. 100 of other States to their enjoyment therein were given. And so
the court held that a corporation, being a grant of special
privileges to the corporators, had no legal existence beyond the
limits of the sovereignty where created, and that the recognition
of its existence by other States, and the enforcement of its
contracts made therein, depended purely upon the assent of those
States, which could be granted upon such terms and conditions as
those States might think proper to impose.

															The whole purport of the decision was that citizens of one State
do not carry with them into other States any special privileges or
immunities, conferred by the laws of their own States, of a
corporate or other character. That decision has no pertinency to
the questions involved in this case. The common privileges and
immunities which of right belong to all citizens, stand on a very
different footing. These the citizens of each State do carry with
them into other States, and are secured by the clause in question
in their enjoyment upon terms of equality with citizens of the
latter States. This equality in one particular was enforced by this
court in the recent case of Ward v. The State of Maryland, reported in the 12th of Wallace. A statute of that State required
the payment of a larger sum from a nonresident trader for a license
to enable him to sell his merchandise in the State than it did of a
resident trader, and the court held that the statute, in thus
discriminating against the nonresident trader, contravened the
clause securing to the citizens of each State the privileges and
immunities of citizens of the several States. The privilege of
disposing of his property, which was an essential incident to his
ownership possessed by the nonresident, was subjected by the
statute of Maryland to a greater burden than was imposed upon a
like privilege of her own citizens. The privileges of the
nonresident were in this particular abridged by that
legislation.

															What the clause in question did for the protection of the
citizens of one State against hostile and discriminating
legislation of other States, the fourteenth amendment does for Page 83 U. S. 101 the protection of every citizen of the United States against
hostile and discriminating legislation against him in favor of
others, whether they reside in the same or in different States. If,
under the fourth article of the Constitution, equality of
privileges and immunities is secured between citizens of different
States, under the fourteenth amendment, the same equality is
secured between citizens of the United States.

															It will not be pretended that, under the fourth article of the
Constitution, any State could create a monopoly in any known trade
or manufacture in favor of her own citizens, or any portion of
them, which would exclude an equal participation in the trade or
manufacture monopolized by citizens of other States. She could not
confer, for example, upon any of her citizens the sole right to
manufacture shoes, or boots, or silk, or the sole right to sell
those articles in the State so as to exclude nonresident citizens
from engaging in a similar manufacture or sale. The nonresident
citizens could claim equality of privilege under the provisions of
the fourth article with the citizens of the State exercising the
monopoly as well as with others, and thus, as respects them, the
monopoly would cease. If this were not so, it would be in the power
of the State to exclude at any time the citizens of other States
from participation in particular branches of commerce or trade, and
extend the exclusion from time to time so as effectually to prevent
any traffic with them.

															Now what the clause in question does for the protection of
citizens of one State against the creation of monopolies in favor
of citizens of other States, the fourteenth amendment does for the
protection of every citizen of the United States against the
creation of any monopoly whatever. The privileges and immunities of
citizens of the United States, of every one of them, is secured
against abridgment in any form by any State. The fourteenth
amendment places them under the guardianship of the National
authority. All monopolies in any known trade or manufacture are an
invasion of these privileges, for they encroach upon the liberty of
citizens to acquire property and pursue happiness, and were Page 83 U. S. 102 held void at common law in the great Case of
Monopolies, decided during the reign of Queen Elizabeth.

															A monopoly is defined

															"to be an institution or allowance from the sovereign power of
the State by grant, commission, or otherwise, to any person or
corporation, for the sole buying, selling, making, working, or
using of anything, whereby any person or persons, bodies politic or
corporate, are sought to be restrained of any freedom or liberty
they had before, or hindered in their lawful trade."

															All such grants relating to any known trade or manufacture have
been held by all the judges of England, whenever they have come up
for consideration, to be void at common law as destroying the
freedom of trade, discouraging labor and industry, restraining
persons from getting an honest livelihood, and putting it into the
power of the grantees to enhance the price of commodities. The
definition embraces, it will be observed, not merely the sole
privilege of buying and selling particular articles, or of engaging
in their manufacture, but also the sole privilege of using anything
by which others may be restrained of the freedom or liberty they
previously had in any lawful trade, or hindered in such trade. It
thus covers in every particular the possession and use of suitable
yards, stables, and buildings for keeping and protecting cattle and
other animals, and for their slaughter. Such establishments are
essential to the free and successful prosecution by any butcher of
the lawful trade of preparing animal food for market. The exclusive
privilege of supplying such yards, buildings, and other
conveniences for the prosecution of this business in a large
district of country, granted by the act of Louisiana to seventeen
persons, is as much a monopoly as though the act had granted to the
company the exclusive privilege of buying and selling the animals
themselves. It equally restrains the butchers in the freedom and
liberty they previously had and hinders them in their lawful
trade.

															The reasons given for the judgment in the Case of
Monopolies apply with equal force to the case at bar. In that
case, a patent had been granted to the plaintiff giving him the
sole Page 83 U. S. 103 right to import playing cards, and the entire traffic in them,
and the sole right to make such cards within the realm. The
defendant, in disregard of this patent, made and sold some gross of
such cards and imported others, and was accordingly sued for
infringing upon the exclusive privileges of the plaintiff. As to a
portion of the cards made and sold within the realm, he pleaded
that he was a haberdasher in London and a free citizen of that
city, and, as such, had a right to make and sell them. The court
held the plea good and the grant void, as against the common law
and divers acts of Parliament. "All trades," said the court,

															"as well mechanical as others, which prevent idleness (the bane
of the commonwealth) and exercise men and youth in labor for the
maintenance of themselves and their families, and for the increase
of their substance, to serve the queen when occasion shall require,
are profitable for the commonwealth, and therefore the grant to the
plaintiff to have the sole making of them is against the common
law and the benefit and liberty of the subject. [ Footnote 2/8 ]"

															The case of Davenant and Hurdis was cited in support of this
position. In that case, a company of merchant tailors in London,
having power by charter to make ordinances for the better rule and
government of the company so that they were consonant to law and
reason, made an ordinance that any brother of the society who
should have any cloth dressed by a clothworker not being a brother
of the society should put one-half of his cloth to some brother of
the same society who exercised the art of a clothworker, upon pain
of forfeiting ten shillings,

															"and it was adjudged that the ordinance, although it had the
countenance of a charter, was against the common law, because
it was against the liberty of the subject; for every subject, by
the law, has freedom and liberty to put his cloth to be dressed by
what clothworker he pleases, and cannot be restrained to certain
persons, for that, in effect, would be a monopoly, and,
therefore, such ordinance, by color of a charter or any grant by
charter to such effect, would be void. " Page 83 U. S. 104 Although the court, in its opinion, refers to the increase in
prices and deterioration in quality of commodities which
necessarily result from the grant of monopolies, the main ground of
the decision was their interference with the liberty of the subject
to pursue for his maintenance and that of his family any lawful
trade or employment. This liberty is assumed to be the natural
right of every Englishman.

															The struggle of the English people against monopolies forms one
of the most interesting and instructive chapters in their history.
It finally ended in the passage of the statute of 21st James I, by
which it was declared

															"that all monopolies and all commissions, grants, licenses,
charters, and letters-patent, to any person or persons, bodies
politic or corporate whatsoever, of or for the sole buying,
selling, making, working, or using of anything"

															within the realm or the dominion of Wales were altogether
contrary to the laws of the realm and utterly void, with the
exception of patents for new inventions for a limited period, and
for printing, then supposed to belong to the prerogative of the
king, and for the preparation and manufacture of certain articles
and ordnance intended for the prosecution of war.

															The common law of England, as is thus seen, condemned all
monopolies in any known trade or manufacture, and declared void all
grants of special privileges whereby others could be deprived of
any liberty which they previously had, or be hindered in their
lawful trade. The statute of James I, to which I have referred,
only embodied the law as it had been previously declared by the
courts of England, although frequently disregarded by the
sovereigns of that country.

															The common law of England is the basis of the jurisprudence of
the United States. It was brought to this country by the colonists,
together with the English statutes, and was established here so far
as it was applicable to their condition. That law and the benefit
of such of the English statutes as existed at the time of their
colonization, and which they had by experience found to be
applicable to their circumstances, were claimed by the Congress of
the United Colonies in 1774 as a part of their "indubitable rights
and liberties." [ Footnote 2/9 ] Page 83 U. S. 105 Of the statutes the benefits of which was thus claimed, the
statute of James I against monopolies was one of the most
important. And when the Colonies separated from the mother country,
no privilege was more fully recognized or more completely
incorporated into the fundamental law of the country than that
every free subject in the British empire was entitled to pursue his
happiness by following any of the known established trades and
occupations of the country, subject only to such restraints as
equally affected all others. The immortal document which proclaimed
the independence of the country declared as self-evident truths
that the Creator had endowed all men

															"with certain inalienable rights, and that among these are life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and that to secure these
rights governments are instituted among men."

															If it be said that the civil law, and not the common law, is the
basis of the jurisprudence of Louisiana, I answer that the decree
of Louis XVI, in 1776, abolished all monopolies of trades and all
special privileges of corporations, guilds, and trading companies,
and authorized every person to exercise, without restraint, his
art, trade, or profession, and such has been the law of France and
of her colonies ever since, and that law prevailed in Louisiana at
the time of her cession to the United States. Since then,
notwithstanding the existence in that State of the civil law as the
basis of her jurisprudence, freedom of pursuit has been always
recognized as the common right of her citizens. But were this
otherwise, the fourteenth amendment secures the like protection to
all citizens in that State against any abridgment of their common
rights, as in other States. That amendment was intended to give
practical effect to the declaration of 1776 of inalienable rights,
rights which are the gift of the Creator, which the law does not
confer, but only recognizes. If the trader in London could plead
that he was a free citizen of that city against the enforcement to
his injury of monopolies, surely, under the fourteenth amendment,
every Page 83 U. S. 106 citizen of the United States should be able to plead his
citizenship of the republic as a protection against any similar
invasion of his privileges and immunities.

															So fundamental has this privilege of every citizen to be free
from disparaging and unequal enactments in the pursuit of the
ordinary avocations of life been regarded that few instances have
arisen where the principle has been so far violated as to call for
the interposition of the courts. But whenever this has occurred,
with the exception of the present cases from Louisiana, which are
the most barefaced and flagrant of all, the enactment interfering
with the privilege of the citizen has been pronounced illegal and
void. When a case under the same law under which the present cases
have arisen came before the Circuit Court of the United States in
the District of Louisiana, there was no hesitation on the part of
the court in declaring the law, in its exclusive features, to be an
invasion of one of the fundamental privileges of the citizen.
[ Footnote 2/10 ] The presiding
justice, in delivering the opinion of the court, observed that it
might be difficult to enumerate or define what were the essential
privileges of a citizen of the United States, which a State could
not by its laws invade, but that, so far as the question under
consideration was concerned, it might be safely said that

															"it is one of the privileges of every American citizen to adopt
and follow such lawful industrial pursuit, not injurious to the
community, as he may see fit, without unreasonable regulation or
molestation and without being restricted by any of those unjust,
oppressive, and odious monopolies or exclusive privileges which
have been condemned by all free governments."

															And again:

															"There is no more sacred right of citizenship than the right to
pursue unmolested a lawful employment in a lawful manner. It is
nothing more nor less than the sacred right of labor."

															In the City of Chicago v. Rumpff, [ Footnote 2/11 ] which was before the Supreme Court
of Illinois, we have a case similar in all its Page 83 U. S. 107 features to the one at bar. That city being authorized by its
charter to regulate and license the slaughtering of animals within
its corporate limits, the common council passed what was termed an
ordinance in reference thereto, whereby a particular building was
designated for the slaughtering of all animals intended for sale or
consumption in the city, the owners of which were granted the
exclusive right for a specified period to have all such animals
slaughtered at their establishment, they to be paid a specific sum
for the privilege of slaughtering there by all persons exercising
it. The validity of this action of the corporate authorities was
assailed on the ground of the grant of exclusive privileges, and
the court said:

															"The charter authorizes the city authorities to license or
regulate such establishments. Where that body has made the
necessary regulations, required for the health or comfort of the
inhabitants, all persons inclined to pursue such an occupation
should have an opportunity of conforming to such regulations,
otherwise the ordinance would be unreasonable, and tend to
oppression. Or, if they should regard it for the interest of the
city that such establishments should be licensed, the ordinance
should be so framed that all persons desiring it might obtain
licenses by conforming to the prescribed terms and regulations for
the government of such business. We regard it neither as a
regulation nor a license of the business to confine it to one
building or to give it to one individual. Such an action is
oppressive, and creates a monopoly that never could have been
contemplated by the General Assembly. It impairs the rights of all
other persons, and cuts them off from a share in not only a legal,
but a necessary, business. Whether we consider this as an ordinance
or a contract, it is equally unauthorized as being opposed to the
rules governing the adoption of municipal by-laws. The principle of
equality of rights to the corporators is violated by this contract.
If the common council may require all of the animals for the
consumption of the city to be slaughtered in a single building, or
on a particular lot, and the owner be paid a specific sum for the
privilege, what would prevent the making a Page 83 U. S. 108 similar contract with some other person that all of the
vegetables, or fruits, the flour, the groceries, the dry goods, or
other commodities should be sold on his lot and he receive a
compensation for the privilege? We can see no difference in
principle."

															It is true that the court in this opinion was speaking of a
municipal ordinance, and not of an act of the legislature of a
State. But, as it is justly observed by counsel, a legislative body
is no more entitled to destroy the equality of rights of citizens,
nor to fetter the industry of a city, than a municipal government.
These rights are protected from invasion by the fundamental
law.

															In the case of the Norwich Gaslight Company v. The Norwich
City Gas Company, [ Footnote
2/12 ] which was before the Supreme Court of Connecticut, it
appeared that the common council of the city of Norwich had passed
a resolution purporting to grant to one Treadway, his heirs and
assigns, for the period of fifteen years, the right to lay gas
pipes in the streets of that city, declaring that no other person
or corporation should, by the consent of the common council, lay
gas pipes in the streets during that time. The plaintiffs, having
purchased of Treadway, undertook to assert an exclusive right to
use the streets for their purposes, as against another company
which was using the streets for the same purposes. And the court
said:

															"As, then, no consideration whatever, either of a public or
private character, was reserved for the grant; and as the business
of manufacturing and selling gas is an ordinary business, like the
manufacture of leather, or any other article of trade in respect to
which the government has no exclusive prerogative, we think that,
so far as the restriction of other persons than the plaintiffs from
using the streets for the purpose of distributing gas by means of
pipes can fairly be viewed as intended to operate as a restriction
upon its free manufacture and sale, it comes directly within the
definition and description of a monopoly, and, although we have no
direct constitutional provision against a monopoly, Page 83 U. S. 109 yet the whole theory of a free government is opposed to such
grants, and it does not require even the aid which may be derived
from the Bill of Rights, the first section of which declares 'that
no man or set of men are entitled to exclusive public emoluments or
privileges from the community,' to render them void."

															In the Mayor of the City of Hudson v. Thorne, [ Footnote 2/13 ] an application was made to
the chancellor of New York to dissolve an injunction restraining
the defendants from erecting a building in the city of Hudson upon
a vacant lot owned by them, intended to be used as a hay-press. The
common council of the city had passed an ordinance directing that
no person should erect, or construct, or cause to be erected or
constructed, any wooden or frame barn, stable, or hay-press of
certain dimensions within certain specified limits in the city
without its permission. It appeared, however, that there were such
buildings already in existence, not only in compact parts of the
city but also within the prohibited limits, the occupation of which
for the storing and pressing of hay the common council did not
intend to restrain. And the chancellor said:

															"If the manufacture of pressed hay within the compact parts of
the city is dangerous in causing or promoting fires, the common
council have the power expressly given by their charter to prevent
the carrying on of such manufacture; but as all by-laws must be
reasonable, the common council cannot make a by-law which shall
permit one person to carry on the dangerous business and prohibit
another who has an equal right from pursuing the same
business."

															In all these cases, there is a recognition of the equality of
right among citizens in the pursuit of the ordinary avocations of
life, and a declaration that all grants of exclusive privileges, in
contravention of this equality, are against common right, and
void.

															This equality of right, with exemption from all disparaging and
partial enactments, in the lawful pursuits of life, Page 83 U. S. 110 throughout the whole country, is the distinguishing privilege of
citizens of the United States. To them, everywhere, all pursuits,
all professions, all avocations are open without other restrictions
than such as are imposed equally upon all others of the same age,
sex, and condition. The State may prescribe such regulations for
every pursuit and calling of life as will promote the public
health, secure the good order and advance the general prosperity of
society, but, when once prescribed, the pursuit or calling must be
free to be followed by every citizen who is within the conditions
designated, and will conform to the regulations. This is the
fundamental idea upon which our institutions rest, and, unless
adhered to in the legislation of the country, our government will
be a republic only in name. The fourteenth amendment, in my
judgment, makes it essential to the validity of the legislation of
every State that this equality of right should be respected. How
widely this equality has been departed from, how entirely rejected
and trampled upon by the act of Louisiana, I have already shown.
And it is to me a matter of profound regret that its validity is
recognized by a majority of this court, for by it the right of free
labor, one of the most sacred and imprescriptible rights of man, is
violated. [ Footnote 2/14 ] As
stated by the Supreme Court of Connecticut in Page 83 U. S. 111 the case cited, grants of exclusive privileges, such as is made
by the act in question, are opposed to the whole theory of free
government, and it requires no aid from any bill of rights to
render them void. That only is a free government, in the American
sense of the term, under which the inalienable right of every
citizen to pursue his happiness is unrestrained, except by just,
equal, and impartial laws. [ Footnote
2/15 ]

															I am authorized by the CHIEF JUSTICE, Mr. Justice SWAYNE, and
Mr. Justice BRADLEY to state that they concur with me in this
dissenting opinion.

															[ Footnote 2/1 ]

															The proclamation of its ratification was made on that day (13
Stat. at Large 774).

															[ Footnote 2/2 ]

															14 id. 27.

															[ Footnote 2/3 ]

															Congressional Globe, 1st Session, 39th Congress, part 1, page
474.

															[ Footnote 2/4 ]

															Calhoun's Works, vol. 2, p. 242.

															[ Footnote 2/5 ]

															May 31st, 1870; 16 Stat. at Large 144.

															[ Footnote 2/6 ]

															4 Washington's Circuit Court 380.

															[ Footnote 2/7 ] 75 U. S. 8 Wallace
168.

															[ Footnote 2/8 ]

															Coke's Reports, part 11, page 86.

															[ Footnote 2/9 ]

															Journals of Congress, vol. i, pp. 28-30.

															[ Footnote 2/10 ] Live-Stock &c. Association v. The Crescent City,
&c., Company, 1 Abbott's United States Reports 398.

															[ Footnote 2/11 ]

															45 Illinois 90.

															[ Footnote 2/12 ]

															25 Connecticut 19.

															[ Footnote 2/13 ]

															7 Paige 261.

															[ Footnote 2/14 ]

															"The property which every man has in his own labor," says Adam
Smith,

															"as it is the original foundation of all other property, so it
is the most sacred and inviolable. The patrimony of the poor man
lies in the strength and dexterity of his own hands; and to hinder
him from employing this strength and dexterity in what manner he
thinks proper, without injury to his neighbor, is a plain violation
of this most sacred property. It is a manifest encroachment upon
the just liberty both of the workman and of those who might be
disposed to employ him. As it hinders the one from working at what
he thinks proper, so it hinders the others from employing whom they
think proper."

															(Smith's Wealth of Nations, b. 1, ch. 10, part 2.)

															In the edict of Louis XVI, in 1776, giving freedom to trades and
professions, prepared by his minister, Turgot, he recites the
contributions that had been made by the guilds and trade companies,
and says:

															"It was the allurement of these fiscal advantages, undoubtedly,
that prolonged the illusion and concealed the immense injury they
did to industry and their infraction of natural right. This
illusion had extended so far that some persons asserted that the
right to work was a royal privilege which the king might sell, and
that his subjects were bound to purchase from him. We hasten to
correct this error, and to repel the conclusion. God, in giving to
man wants and desires rendering labor necessary for their
satisfaction, conferred the right to labor upon all men, and this
property is the first, most sacred, and imprescriptible of
all."

															He, therefore, regards it

															"as the first duty of his justice, and the worthiest act of
benevolence, to free his subjects from any restriction upon this
inalienable right of humanity."

															[ Footnote 2/15 ]

															"Civil liberty, the great end of all human society and
government, is that state in which each individual has the power to
pursue his own happiness according to his own views of his
interest, and the dictates of his conscience, unrestrained, except
by equal, just, and impartial laws."

															1 Sharswood's Blackstone 127, note 8.

															Mr. Justice BRADLEY, also dissenting.

															I concur in the opinion which has just been read by Mr. Justice
Field, but desire to add a few observations for the purpose of more
fully illustrating my views on the important question decided in
these cases, and the special grounds on which they rest.

															The fourteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United
States, section 1, declares that no State shall make or enforce any
law which shall abridge the privileges and immunities of citizens
of the United States.

															The legislature of Louisiana, under pretence of making a police
regulation for the promotion of the public health, passed an act
conferring upon a corporation, created by the act, the exclusive
right, for twenty-five years, to have and maintain slaughterhouses,
landings for cattle, and yards for Page 83 U. S. 112 confining cattle intended for slaughter, within the parishes of
Orleans, Jefferson, and St. Bernard, a territory containing nearly
twelve hundred square miles, including the city of New Orleans; and
prohibiting all other persons from building, keeping, or having
slaughterhouses, landings for cattle, and yards for confining
cattle intended for slaughter within the said limits; and requiring
that all cattle and other animals to be slaughtered for food in
that district should be brought to the slaughterhouses and works of
the favored company to be slaughtered, and a payment of a fee to
the company for such act.

															It is contended that this prohibition abridges the privileges
and immunities of citizens of the United States, especially of the
plaintiffs in error, who were particularly affected thereby, and
whether it does so or not is the simple question in this case. And
the solution of this question depends upon the solution of two
other questions, to-wit:

															First. Is it one of the rights and privileges of a citizen of
the United States to pursue such civil employment as he may choose
to adopt, subject to such reasonable regulations as may be
prescribed by law?

															Secondly. Is a monopoly, or exclusive right, given to one person
to the exclusion of all others, to keep slaughterhouses, in a
district of nearly twelve hundred square miles, for the supply of
meat for a large city, a reasonable regulation of that employment
which the legislature has a right to impose?

															The first of these questions is one of vast importance, and lies
at the very foundations of our government. The question is now
settled by the fourteenth amendment itself, that citizenship of the
United States is the primary citizenship in this country, and that
State citizenship is secondary and derivative, depending upon
citizenship of the United States and the citizen's place of
residence. The States have not now, if they ever had, any power to
restrict their citizenship to any classes or persons. A citizen of
the United States has a perfect constitutional right to go to and
reside in any State he chooses, and to claim citizenship
therein, Page 83 U. S. 113 and an equality of rights with every other citizen, and the
whole power of the nation is pledged to sustain him in that right.
He is not bound to cringe to any superior, or to pray for any act
of grace, as a means of enjoying all the rights and privileges
enjoyed by other citizens. And when the spirit of lawlessness, mob
violence, and sectional hate can be so completely repressed as to
give full practical effect to this right, we shall be a happier
nation, and a more prosperous one, than we now are. Citizenship of
the United States ought to be, and, according to the Constitution,
is, a sure and undoubted title to equal rights in any and every
States in this Union, subject to such regulations as the
legislature may rightfully prescribe. If a man be denied full
equality before the law, he is denied one of the essential rights
of citizenship as a citizen of the United States.

															Every citizen, then, being primarily a citizen of the United
States, and, secondarily, a citizen of the State where he resides,
what, in general, are the privileges and immunities of a citizen of
the United States? Is the right, liberty, or privilege of choosing
any lawful employment one of them?

															If a State legislature should pass a law prohibiting the
inhabitants of a particular township, county, or city, from tanning
leather or making shoes, would such a law violate any privileges or
immunities of those inhabitants as citizens of the United States,
or only their privileges and immunities as citizens of that
particular State? Or if a State legislature should pass a law of
caste, making all trades and professions, or certain enumerated
trades and professions, hereditary, so that no one could follow any
such trades or professions except that which was pursued by his
father, would such a law violate the privileges and immunities of
the people of that State as citizens of the United States, or only
as citizens of the State? Would they have no redress but to appeal
to the courts of that particular State?

															This seems to me to be the essential question before us for
consideration. And, in my judgment, the right of any citizen to
follow whatever lawful employment he chooses to adopt (submitting
himself to all lawful regulations) is one of Page 83 U. S. 114 his most valuable rights, and one which the legislature of a
State cannot invade, whether restrained by its own constitution or
not.

															The right of a State to regulate the conduct of its citizens is
undoubtedly a very broad and extensive one, and not to be lightly
restricted. But there are certain fundamental rights which this
right of regulation cannot infringe. It may prescribe the manner of
their exercise, but it cannot subvert the rights themselves. I
speak now of the rights of citizens of any free government.
Granting for the present that the citizens of one government cannot
claim the privileges of citizens in another government, that, prior
to the union of our North American States, the citizens of one
State could not claim the privileges of citizens in another State,
or that, after the union was formed, the citizens of the United
States, as such, could not claim the privileges of citizens in any
particular State, yet the citizens of each of the States and the
citizens of the United States would be entitled to certain
privileges and immunities as citizens at the hands of their own
government -- privileges and immunities which their own governments
respectively would be bound to respect and maintain. In this free
country, the people of which inherited certain traditionary rights
and privileges from their ancestors, citizenship means something.
It has certain privileges and immunities attached to it which the
government, whether restricted by express or implied limitations,
cannot take away or impair. It may do so temporarily by force, but
it cannot do so by right. And these privileges and immunities
attach as well to citizenship of the United States as to
citizenship of the States.

															The people of this country brought with them to its shores the
rights of Englishmen, the rights which had been wrested from
English sovereigns at various periods of the nation's history. One
of these fundamental rights was expressed in these words, found in
Magna Charta:

															"No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseized of his
freehold or liberties or free customs, or be outlawed or exiled, or
any otherwise destroyed; nor will we pass upon him or condemn Page 83 U. S. 115 him but by lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the
land."

															English constitutional writers expound this article as rendering
life, liberty, and property inviolable except by due process of
law. This is the very right which the plaintiffs in error claim in
this case. Another of these rights was that of habeas corpus, or
the right of having any invasion of personal liberty judicially
examined into, at once, by a competent judicial magistrate.
Blackstone classifies these fundamental rights under three heads,
as the absolute rights of individuals, to-wit: the right of
personal security, the right of personal liberty, and the right of
private property. And, of the last, he says:

															"The third absolute right, inherent in every Englishman, is that
of property, which consists in the free use, enjoyment, and
disposal of all his acquisitions, without any control or diminution
save only by the laws of the land."

															The privileges and immunities of Englishmen were established and
secured by long usage and by various acts of Parliament. But it may
be said that the Parliament of England has unlimited authority, and
might repeal the laws which have from time to time been enacted.
Theoretically, this is so, but practically it is not. England has
no written constitution, it is true, but it has an unwritten one,
resting in the acknowledged, and frequently declared, privileges of
Parliament and the people, to violate which in any material respect
would produce a revolution in an hour. A violation of one of the
fundamental principles of that constitution in the Colonies,
namely, the principle that recognizes the property of the people as
their own, and which, therefore, regards all taxes for the support
of government as gifts of the people through their representatives,
and regards taxation without representation as subversive of free
government, was the origin of our own revolution.

															This, it is true, was the violation of a political right, but
personal rights were deemed equally sacred, and were claimed by the
very first Congress of the Colonies, assembled in 1774, as the
undoubted inheritance of the people of this country; and the
Declaration of Independence, which Page 83 U. S. 116 was the first political act of the American people in their
independent sovereign capacity, lays the foundation of our National
existence upon this broad proposition:

															"That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

															Here again we have the great three-fold division of the rights
of freemen, asserted as the rights of man. Rights to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness are equivalent to the rights of life,
liberty, and property. These are the fundamental rights which can
only be taken away by due process of law, and which can only be
interfered with, or the enjoyment of which can only be modified, by
lawful regulations necessary or proper for the mutual good of all;
and these rights, I contend, belong to the citizens of every free
government.

															For the preservation, exercise, and enjoyment of these rights
the individual citizen, as a necessity, must be left free to adopt
such calling, profession, or trade as may seem to him most
conducive to that end. Without this right, he cannot be a freeman.
This right to choose one's calling is an essential part of that
liberty which it is the object of government to protect, and a
calling, when chosen, is a man's property and right. Liberty and
property are not protected where these rights are arbitrarily
assailed.

															I think sufficient has been said to show that citizenship is not
an empty name, but that, in this country, at least, it has
connected with it certain incidental rights, privileges, and
immunities of the greatest importance. And to say that these rights
and immunities attach only to State citizenship, and not to
citizenship of the United States, appears to me to evince a very
narrow and insufficient estimate of constitutional history and the
rights of men, not to say the rights of the American people.

															On this point, the often-quoted language of Mr. Justice
Washington, in Corfield v. Coryell, * is very instructive.
Being Page 83 U. S. 117 called upon to expound that clause in the fourth article of the
Constitution which declares that "the citizens of each State shall
be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the
several States," he says:

															"The inquiry is what are the privileges and immunities of
citizens in the several States? We feel no hesitation in confining
these expressions to those privileges and immunities which are, in
their nature, fundamental, which belong, of right, to the citizens
of all free governments, and which have at all times been enjoyed
by the citizens of the several States which compose this Union from
the time of their becoming free, independent, and sovereign. What
these fundamental privileges are it would perhaps be more tedious
than difficult to enumerate. They may, however, be all comprehended
under the following general heads: protection by the government;
the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the right to acquire and
possess property of every kind, and to pursue and obtain happiness
and safety, subject, nevertheless, to such restraints as the
government may justly prescribe for the general good of the whole;
the right of a citizen of one State to pass through, or to reside
in, any other State for purposes of trade, agriculture,
professional pursuits, or otherwise; to claim the benefit of the
writ of habeas corpus; to institute and maintain actions of any
kind in the courts of the State; to take, hold, and dispose of
property, either real or personal; and an exemption from higher
taxes or impositions than are paid by the other citizens of the
State, may be mentioned as some of the particular privileges and
immunities of citizens which are clearly embraced by the general
description of privileges deemed to be fundamental."

															It is pertinent to observe that both the clause of the
Constitution referred to and Justice Washington, in his comment on
it, speak of the privileges and immunities of citizens in a State,
not of citizens of a State. It is the privileges and immunities of
citizens, that is, of citizens as such, that are to be accorded to
citizens of other States when they are found in any State; or, as
Justice Washington says,

															"privileges and immunities which are, in their nature,
fundamental; Page 83 U. S. 118 which belong, of right, to the citizens of all free
governments."

															It is true the courts have usually regarded the clause referred
to as securing only an equality of privileges with the citizens of
the State in which the parties are found. Equality before the law
is undoubtedly one of the privileges and immunities of every
citizen. I am not aware that any case has arisen in which it became
necessary to vindicate any other fundamental privilege of
citizenship; although rights have been claimed which were not
deemed fundamental, and have been rejected as not within the
protection of this clause. Be this, however, as it may, the
language of the clause is as I have stated it, and seems fairly
susceptible of a broader interpretation than that which makes it a
guarantee of mere equality of privileges with other citizens.

															But we are not bound to resort to implication, or to the
constitutional history of England, to find an authoritative
declaration of some of the most important privileges and immunities
of citizens of the United States. It is in the Constitution itself.
The Constitution, it is true, as it stood prior to the recent
amendments, specifies, in terms, only a few of the personal
privileges and immunities of citizens, but they are very
comprehensive in their character. The States were merely prohibited
from passing bills of attainder, ex post facto laws, laws
impairing the obligation of contracts, and perhaps one or two more.
But others of the greatest consequence were enumerated, although
they were only secured, in express terms, from invasion by the
Federal government; such as the right of habeas corpus, the right
of trial by jury, of free exercise of religious worship, the right
of free speech and a free press, the right peaceably to assemble
for the discussion of public measures, the right to be secure
against unreasonable searches and seizures, and above all, and
including almost all the rest, the right of not being deprived
of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. These and still others are specified in the original Constitution,
or in the early amendments of it, as among the privileges and
immunities Page 83 U. S. 119 of citizens of the United States, or, what is still stronger for
the force of the argument, the rights of all persons, whether
citizens or not.

															But even if the Constitution were silent, the fundamental
privileges and immunities of citizens, as such, would be no less
real and no less inviolable than they now are. It was not necessary
to say in words that the citizens of the United States should have
and exercise all the privileges of citizens; the privilege of
buying, selling, and enjoying property; the privilege of engaging
in any lawful employment for a livelihood; the privilege of
resorting to the laws for redress of injuries, and the like. Their
very citizenship conferred these privileges, if they did not
possess them before. And these privileges they would enjoy whether
they were citizens of any State or not. Inhabitants of Federal
territories and new citizens, made such by annexation of territory
or naturalization, though without any status as citizens of a
State, could, nevertheless, as citizens of the United States, lay
claim to every one of the privileges and immunities which have been
enumerated, and among these none is more essential and fundamental
than the right to follow such profession or employment as each one
may choose, subject only to uniform regulations equally applicable
to all.

															II. The next question to be determined in this case is: is a
monopoly or exclusive right, given to one person, or corporation,
to the exclusion of all others, to keep slaughterhouses in a
district of nearly twelve hundred square miles, for the supply of
meat for a great city, a reasonable regulation of that employment
which the legislature has a right to impose?

															The keeping of a slaughterhouse is part of, and incidental to,
the trade of a butcher -- one of the ordinary occupations of human
life. To compel a butcher, or rather all the butchers of a large
city and an extensive district, to slaughter their cattle in
another person's slaughterhouse and pay him a toll therefor is such
a restriction upon the trade as materially to interfere with its
prosecution. It is onerous, unreasonable, arbitrary, and unjust. It
has none of the Page 83 U. S. 120 qualities of a police regulation. If it were really a police
regulation, it would undoubtedly be within the power of the
legislature. That portion of the act which requires all
slaughterhouses to be located below the city, and to be subject to
inspection, &c., is clearly a police regulation. That portion
which allows no one but the favored company to build, own, or have
slaughterhouses is not a police regulation, and has not the
faintest semblance of one. It is one of those arbitrary and unjust
laws, made in the interest of a few scheming individuals, by which
some of the Southern States have, within the past few years, been
so deplorably oppressed and impoverished. It seems to me strange
that it can be viewed in any other light.

															The granting of monopolies, or exclusive privileges to
individuals or corporations is an invasion of the right of others
to choose a lawful calling, and an infringement of personal
liberty. It was so felt by the English nation as far back as the
reigns of Elizabeth and James. A fierce struggle for the
suppression of such monopolies, and for abolishing the prerogative
of creating them, was made, and was successful. The statute of 21st
James abolishing monopolies was one of those constitutional
landmarks of English liberty which the English nation so highly
prizes and so jealously preserves. It was a part of that
inheritance which our fathers brought with them. This statute
abolished all monopolies except grants for a term of years to the
inventors of new manufactures. This exception is the groundwork of
patents for new inventions and copyrights of books. These have
always been sustained as beneficial to the state. But all other
monopolies were abolished as tending to the impoverishment of the
people and to interference with their free pursuits. And ever since
that struggle, no English-speaking people have ever endured such an
odious badge of tyranny.

															It has been suggested that this was a mere legislative act, and
that the British Parliament, as well as our own legislatures, have
frequently disregarded it by granting exclusive privileges for
erecting ferries, railroads, markets, and other establishments of a
public kind. It requires but a slight Page 83 U. S. 121 acquaintance with legal history to know that grants of this kind
of franchises are totally different from the monopolies of
commodities or of ordinary callings or pursuits. These public
franchises can only be exercised under authority from the
government, and the government may grant them on such conditions as
it sees fit. But even these exclusive privileges are becoming more
and more odious, and are getting to be more and more regarded as
wrong in principle, and as inimical to the just rights and greatest
good of the people. But to cite them as proof of the power of
legislatures to create mere monopolies, such as no free and
enlightened community any longer endures, appears to me, to say the
least, very strange and illogical.

															Lastly: can the Federal courts administer relief to citizens of
the United States whose privileges and immunities have been
abridged by a State? Of this I entertain no doubt. Prior to the
fourteenth amendment, this could not be done, except in a few
instances, for the want of the requisite authority.

															As the great mass of citizens of the United States were also
citizens of individual States, many of their general privileges and
immunities would be the same in the one capacity as in the other.
Having this double citizenship, and the great body of municipal
laws intended for the protection of person and property being the
laws of the State, and no provision being made, and no machinery
provided by the Constitution, except in a few specified cases, for
any interference by the General Government between a State and its
citizens, the protection of the citizen in the enjoyment of his
fundamental privileges and immunities (except where a citizen of
one State went into another State) was largely left to State laws
and State courts, where they will still continue to be left unless
actually invaded by the unconstitutional acts or delinquency of the
State governments themselves.

															Admitting, therefore, that formerly the States were not
prohibited from infringing any of the fundamental privileges and
immunities of citizens of the United States, except Page 83 U. S. 122 in a few specified cases, that cannot be said now, since the
adoption of the fourteenth amendment. In my judgment, it was the
intention of the people of this country in adopting that amendment
to provide National security against violation by the States of the
fundamental rights of the citizen.

															The first section of this amendment, after declaring that all
persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to
its jurisdiction, are citizens of the United States and of the
State wherein they reside, proceeds to declare further that

															"no State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the
privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor
shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property,
without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its
jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws;"

															and that Congress shall have power to enforce by appropriate
legislation the provisions of this article.

															Now here is a clear prohibition on the States against making or
enforcing any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities
of citizens of the United States.

															If my views are correct with regard to what are the privileges
and immunities of citizens, it follows conclusively that any law
which establishes a sheer monopoly, depriving a large class of
citizens of the privilege of pursuing a lawful employment, does
abridge the privileges of those citizens.

															The amendment also prohibits any State from depriving any person
(citizen or otherwise) of life, liberty, or property, without due
process of law.

															In my view, a law which prohibits a large class of citizens from
adopting a lawful employment, or from following a lawful employment
previously adopted, does deprive them of liberty as well as
property, without due process of law. Their right of choice is a
portion of their liberty; their occupation is their property. Such
a law also deprives those citizens of the equal protection of the
laws, contrary to the last clause of the section.

															The constitutional question is distinctly raised in these cases;
the constitutional right is expressly claimed; it was Page 83 U. S. 123 violated by State law, which was sustained by the State court,
and we are called upon in a legitimate and proper way to afford
redress. Our jurisdiction and our duty are plain and
imperative.

															It is futile to argue that none but persons of the African race
are intended to be benefited by this amendment. They may have been
the primary cause of the amendment, but its language is general,
embracing all citizens, and I think it was purposely so
expressed.

															The mischief to be remedied was not merely slavery and its
incidents and consequences, but that spirit of insubordination and
disloyalty to the National government which had troubled the
country for so many years in some of the States, and that
intolerance of free speech and free discussion which often rendered
life and property insecure, and led to much unequal legislation.
The amendment was an attempt to give voice to the strong National
yearning for that time and that condition of things, in which
American citizenship should be a sure guaranty of safety, and in
which every citizen of the United States might stand erect on every
portion of its soil, in the full enjoyment of every right and
privilege belonging to a freeman, without fear of violence or
molestation.

															But great fears are expressed that this construction of the
amendment will lead to enactments by Congress interfering with the
internal affairs of the States, and establishing therein civil and
criminal codes of law for the government of the citizens, and thus
abolishing the State governments in everything but name; or else,
that it will lead the Federal courts to draw to their cognizance
the supervision of State tribunals on every subject of judicial
inquiry, on the plea of ascertaining whether the privileges and
immunities of citizens have not been abridged.

															In my judgment, no such practical inconveniences would arise.
Very little, if any, legislation on the part of Congress would be
required to carry the amendment into effect. Like the prohibition
against passing a law impairing the obligation of a contract, it
would execute itself. The point would Page 83 U. S. 124 be regularly raised in a suit at law, and settled by final
reference to the Federal court. As the privileges and immunities
protected are only those fundamental ones which belong to every
citizen, they would soon become so far defined as to cause but a
slight accumulation of business in the Federal courts. Besides, the
recognized existence of the law would prevent its frequent
violation. But even if the business of the National courts should
be increased, Congress could easily supply the remedy by increasing
their number and efficiency. The great question is what is the true
construction of the amendment? When once we find that, we shall
find the means of giving it effect. The argument from inconvenience
ought not to have a very controlling influence in questions of this
sort. The National will and National interest are of far greater
importance.

															In my opinion the judgment of the Supreme Court of Louisiana
ought to be reversed.

															* 4 Washington 380.

															Mr. Justice SWAYNE, dissenting.

															I concur in the dissent in these cases and in the views
expressed by my brethren, Mr. Justice Field and Mr. Justice
Bradley. I desire, however, to submit a few additional remarks.

															The first eleven amendments to the Constitution were intended to
be checks and limitations upon the government which that instrument
called into existence. They had their origin in a spirit of
jealousy on the part of the States which existed when the
Constitution was adopted. The first ten were proposed in 1789 by
the first Congress at its first session after the organization of
the government. The eleventh was proposed in 1794, and the twelfth
in 1803. The one last mentioned regulates the mode of electing the
President and Vice-President. It neither increased nor diminished
the power of the General Government, and may be said in that
respect to occupy neutral ground. No further amendments were made
until 1865, a period of more than sixty years. The thirteenth
amendment was proposed by Congress on the 1st of February, 1865,
the fourteenth on Page 83 U. S. 125 the 16th of June, 1866, and the fifteenth on the 27th of
February, 1869. These amendments are a new departure, and mark an
important epoch in the constitutional history of the country. They
trench directly upon the power of the States, and deeply affect
those bodies. They are, in this respect, at the opposite pole from
the first eleven. [ Footnote
3/1 ]

															Fairly construed, these amendments may be said to rise to the
dignity of a new Magna Charta. The thirteenth blotted out slavery
and forbade forever its restoration. It struck the fetters from
four millions of human beings, and raised them at once to the
sphere of freemen. This was an act of grace and justice performed
by the Nation. Before the war, it could have been done only by the
States where the institution existed, acting severally and
separately from each other. The power then rested wholly with them.
In that way, apparently, such a result could never have occurred.
The power of Congress did not extend to the subject, except in the
Territories.

															The fourteenth amendment consists of five sections. The first is
as follows:

															"All persons born or naturalized within the United States, and
subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United
States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make
any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of
citizens of the United States, nor shall any State deprive any
person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,
nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection
of the laws."

															The fifth section declares that Congress shall have power to
enforce the provisions of this amendment by appropriate
legislation.

															The fifteenth amendment declares that the right to vote shall
not be denied or abridged by the United States, or by any State, on
account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Until
this amendment was adopted the subject Page 83 U. S. 126 to which it relates was wholly within the jurisdiction of the
States. The General Government was excluded from participation.

															The first section of the fourteenth amendment is alone involved
in the consideration of these cases. No searching analysis is
necessary to eliminate its meaning. Its language is intelligible
and direct. Nothing can be more transparent. Every word employed
has an established signification. There is no room for
construction. There is nothing to construe. Elaboration may
obscure, but cannot make clearer, the intent and purpose sought to
be carried out.

															(1) Citizens of the States and of the United States are
defined.

															(2) It is declared that no State shall, by law, abridge the
privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.

															(3) That no State shall deprive any person, whether a citizen or
not, of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, nor
deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of
the laws.

															A citizen of a State is ipso facto a citizen of the
United States. No one can be the former without being also the
latter; but the latter, by losing his residence in one State
without acquiring it in another, although he continues to be the
latter, ceases for the time to be the former. "The privileges and
immunities" of a citizen of the United States include, among other
things, the fundamental rights of life, liberty, and property, and
also the rights which pertain to him by reason of his membership of
the Nation. The citizen of a State has the same fundamental rights
as a citizen of the United States, and also certain others, local
in their character, arising from his relation to the State, and, in
addition, those which belong to the citizen of the United States,
he being in that relation also. There may thus be a double
citizenship, each having some rights peculiar to itself. It is only
over those which belong to the citizen of the United States that
the category here in question throws the shield of its protection.
All those which belong to the citizen of a State, except as a bills
of attainder, ex post facto Page 83 U. S. 127 laws, and laws impairing the obligation of contracts, [ Footnote 3/2 ] are left to the guardianship
of the bills of rights, constitutions, and laws of the States
respectively. Those rights may all be enjoyed in every State by the
citizens of every other State by virtue of clause 2, section 4,
article 1, of the Constitution of the United States as it was
originally framed. This section does not in anywise affect them;
such was not its purpose.

															In the next category, obviously ex industria, to
prevent, as far as may be, the possibility of misinterpretation,
either as to persons or things, the phrases "citizens of the United
States" and "privileges and immunities" are dropped, and more
simple and comprehensive terms are substituted. The substitutes are
"any person," and "life," "liberty," and "property," and "the equal
protection of the laws." Life, liberty, and property are forbidden
to be taken "without due process of law," and "equal protection of
the laws" is guaranteed to all. Life is the gift of God, and the
right to preserve it is the most sacred of the rights of man.
Liberty is freedom from all restraints but such as are justly
imposed by law. Beyond that line lies the domain of usurpation and
tyranny. Property is everything which has an exchangeable value,
and the right of property includes the power to dispose of it
according to the will of the owner. Labor is property, and as such
merits protection. The right to make it available is next in
importance to the rights of life and liberty. It lies to a large
extent at the foundation of most other forms of property, and of
all solid individual and national prosperity. "Due process of law"
is the application of the law as it exists in the fair and regular
course of administrative procedure. "The equal protection of the
laws" places all upon a footing of legal equality and gives the
same protection to all for the preservation of life, liberty, and
property, and the pursuit of happiness. [ Footnote 3/3 ] Page 83 U. S. 128 It is admitted that the plaintiffs in error are citizens of the
United States, and persons within the jurisdiction of Louisiana.
The cases before us, therefore, present but two questions.

															(1) Does the act of the legislature creating the monopoly in
question abridge the privileges and immunities of the plaintiffs in
error as citizens of the United States?

															(2) Does it deprive them of liberty or property without due
process of law, or deny them the equal protection of the laws of
the State, they being persons "within its jurisdiction?"

															Both these inquiries I remit for their answer as to the facts to
the opinions of my brethren, Mr. Justice Field and Mr. Justice
Bradley. They are full and conclusive upon the subject. A more
flagrant and indefensible invasion of the rights of many for the
benefit of a few has not occurred in the legislative history of the
country. The response to both inquiries should be in the
affirmative. In my opinion, the cases, as presented in the record,
are clearly within the letter and meaning of both the negative
categories of the sixth section. The judgments before us should,
therefore, be reversed.

															These amendments are all consequences of the late civil war. The
prejudices and apprehension as to the central government which
prevailed when the Constitution was adopted were dispelled by the
light of experience. The public mind became satisfied that there
was less danger of tyranny in the head than of anarchy and tyranny
in the members. The provisions of this section are all eminently
conservative in their character. They are a bulwark of defence, and
can never be made an engine of oppression. The language employed is
unqualified in its scope. There is no exception in its terms, and
there can be properly none in their application. By the language
"citizens of the United States" was meant all such citizens; and by
"any person" Page 83 U. S. 129 was meant all persons within the jurisdiction of the State. No
distinction is intimated on account of race or color. This court
has no authority to interpolate a limitation that is neither
expressed nor implied. Our duty is to execute the law, not to make
it. The protection provided was not intended to be confined to
those of any particular race or class, but to embrace equally all
races, classes, and conditions of men. It is objected that the
power conferred is novel and large. The answer is that the novelty
was known, and the measure deliberately adopted. The power is
beneficent in its nature, and cannot be abused. It is such as
should exist in every well-ordered system of polity. Where could it
be more appropriately lodged than in the hands to which it is
confided? It is necessary to enable the government of the nation to
secure to everyone within its jurisdiction the rights and
privileges enumerated, which, according to the plainest
considerations of reason and justice and the fundamental principles
of the social compact all are entitled to enjoy. Without such
authority, any government claiming to be national is glaringly
defective. The construction adopted by the majority of my brethren
is, in my judgment, much too narrow. It defeats, by a limitation
not anticipated, the intent of those by whom the instrument was
framed and of those by whom it was adopted. To the extent of that
limitation, it turns, as it were, what was meant for bread into a
stone. By the Constitution as it stood before the war, ample
protection was given against oppression by the Union, but little
was given against wrong and oppression by the States. That want was
intended to be supplied by this amendment. Against the former, this
court has been called upon more than once to interpose. Authority
of the same amplitude was intended to be conferred as to the
latter. But this arm of our jurisdiction is, in these cases,
stricken down by the judgment just given. Nowhere than in this
court ought the will of the nation, as thus expressed, to be more
liberally construed or more cordially executed. This determination
of the majority seems to me to lie far in the other direction. Page 83 U. S. 130 I earnestly hope that the consequences to follow may prove less
serious and far-reaching than the minority fear they will be.

															[ Footnote 3/1 ] Barron v.
Baltimore , 7 Peters 243; Livingston v. Moore,
ib. 32 U. S. 551 ; Fox v. Ohio , 5
Howard 410, 429 [argument of counsel -- omitted]; Smith v.
Maryland , 18 id. 71; Pervear v.
Commonwealth , 5 Wallace 476; Twitchell
v. Commonwealth , 7 id. 321.

															[ Footnote 3/2 ]

															Constitution of the United States, Article I, Section 10.

															[ Footnote 3/3 ] Corfield v. Coryell, 4 Washington 380; Lemmon v.
The People, 26 Barbour 274, and 20 New York 626; Conner v.
Elliott , 18 Howard 593; Murray v. McCarty, 2 Mumford 399; Campbell v. Morris, 3 Harris & McHenry
554; Towles's Case, 5 Leigh 748; State v.
Medbury, 3 Rhode Island 142; 1 Tucker's Blackstone 145; 1
Cooley's Blackstone 125, 128.