that the legal conception of property is definite and permanent, that "property" ex isted prior to the Constitution and is supe rior to it, and that the principal object of that instrument is to preserve it forever in its original lines regardless of economic, social and moral changes, the exigencies of society and the very life of the State itself." Especially timely is the writer's comment on the Northern Securities Case: Under neath the question whether the Northern Securities Merger is a violation of the Fed eral Anti-Trust Law, which is the question presented in the case of the United States against that company, is the more funda mental and perhaps the controlling ques tion [assuming the absence of purely techni cal questions] presented in the case of the State of Minnesota against that company, whether the Northern Securities Company, under the sovereignty of New Jersey which created it, can assert rights in property local ized in Minnesota, contrary to the statutes of that State enacted in the exercise of its Police Power. It is the same question which inhered in 'the License Cases and in the Slavery Cases—the paramount right of a State in the exercise of its Police Power to determine the status of property localized or situated within its territorial limits as against the legislation of another State, touching such property. The fugitive Slave Clause alone prevented the assertion of this right in regard to the escaped slave. The Commerce Clause alone prevented its assertion in regard to the barrel of gin, and then only as to the first sale in the original package. What shall prevent its assertion by the State of Minnesota in respect to the railways of that State? By what Federal Power or Guarantee, by what inherent Sov ereign Power of her own, can New Jersey assume to determine the status of the owner ship of the railways of Minnesota, and by the alchemy of modern corporation law con vert real estate in Minnesota into personalty through the medium of stock certificates, and consolidate in the ownership of a New Jersey corporation the railways of Minneso ta, whose consolidation the fundamental law
and express policy of that State forbid? The plea may be made, as it has been made by the Northern Securities Company in the Minnesota case, that freedom of com merce forbids that the State of Minnesota should have the power to prevent the con solidation of her State railways, in that such consolidation, necessarily affecting inter state commerce, would be interference there with, and therefore illegal. The object of this plea is obviously to secure the consum mation of the purposes of the Northern Se curities Company through the nullification of the Railway Law of Minnesota. But the plea contains within itself its own refutation, for surely if the law of the State of Minne sota consolidating her railways is void be cause inimical to the Commerce Clause of the Federal Constitution, the Law of the State of New Jersey creating a corporation which by original purpose or subsequent ac cident consolidated those railways in a single ownership would be equally inimical to the Commerce Clause. . . . But argument in respect to the validity of the plea is super fluous for the Supreme Court has already spoken (in Louisville & Nashville Railway v. Kentucky, 161 U. S. 677). THE interesting question "Is the British Empire Constitutionally a Nation?" is dis cussed by Stephen B. Stanton in the March number of the Michigan Law Review. After noting that the power of declaring war and of making peace, and the management of foreign relations and of the army and navy, reside wholly with England, and that im perial expenses must be met with English taxes alone, he says: The British Empire is federal in spirit but imperial in form. England is trying to run it on federal principles without the facilities of a federal system or the strength of a fed eral constitution. She thinks and plans for the colonies; endeavors extra-constitutionally to learn their needs and wishes; and she spends and fights for them. But she has not, to meet this expenditure, the disposal of an imperial revenue; nor in the discharge of
