The ' Open Door ' Policy and the Law. For this reason no import duties can be levied in California on articles the growth, produce, or manufacture of the United States, as no such duties can be imposed in any other part of our Union on the products of California. Nor can new duties be charged in California upon such foreign productions as have already paid duties in any of our ports of entry, for the obvious reason that California is within the territory of the United States." During the military occupation, when a war tariff was exacted, and before the estab lishing of a port of entry at San Francisco by the legislature, Cross, Hobson & Com pany, among others, attempted to land for eign goods in the port of San Francisco without the payment of duty, holding, as Mr. Foraker now holds, that as there was no port of entry, and the port being in the ter ritory and not in the United States, there was no authority to collect the duties. Col lector Harrison, however, insisted on col lecting the revenues, and Cross, Hobson & Company paid the demand under protest, and afterward brought suit to recover. This case came before the Supreme Court of the United States on a writ of error to the Cir cuit Court of the United States for the south ern district of New York. Mr. Justice Wayne, in delivering the opinion of the court, says : "It was urged that our revenue laws covered only so much of the territory of the United States as had been divided into collection districts, and that out of them no authority had been given to prevent the landing of foreign goods or to charge duties upon them, though such landing had been made within the territorial limits of the United States. To this it may be successfully replied that collection districts and ports of entry are no more than designated localities within and at which Congress had extended a liber ty of commerce in the United States, and that so much of its territory as was not with in any collection district, must be considered as having been witheld from that liberty. It
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is very well understood to be a part of the laws of nations, that each nation may desig nate, upon its own terms, the ports and places within its territory for foreign com merce, and that any attempt to introduce foreign goods elsewhere within its jurisdiction, is a violation of its sovereignty. It is not necessary that such should be decreed in terms, or by any decree or enactment, the expressed allowances being the limit of the liberty given to foreigners to trade with such nation. Upon this principle the plaintiffs had no right of trade with California with foreign goods, except upon the permission given by the United States under the civil government and war tariff which had been established there. And when the country was ceded as a conquest, by a treaty of peace, no larger liberty to trade resulted. By the ratification of the treaty, California became a part of the United States. And as there is nothing differently stipulated in the treaty with respect to commerce, it be came instantly bound and privileged by the laws which Congress had passed to raise a revenue from duties on imports and tonnage. . . . The right claimed to land foreign goods within the United States at any place out of a collection district, if allowed, would be a violation of that provision in the Constitu tion which enjoins that all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States. Indeed it must be very clear that no such right exists, and that there was nothing in the condition of California to exempt importers of foreign goods into it from payment of the same duties which were chargeable in the other ports of the United States." This case is exactly in point; it is deal ing with precisely the same situation which will exist when the Philippine Islands are brought under the jurisdiction of the United States by conquest, and the court distinctly asserts that the constitutional pro vision in respect to duties is as active in the conquered territory of California, as in any
