THE SUPREME COURT DECISION.
The decisions of the supreme court deciding the status of the recently acquired insular territory of the United States are, to say the least, remarkably confusing. It is doubtful if, since the days when Chief-Justice Marshall delivered his masterful expositions of the Constitution, a case fraught with graver and more far-reaching consequences than these has been passed upon. In the most important case the court was divided five to four, and never was one opinion more diametrically opposed to another than is that of the minority to the majority’s findings. Even the justices composing the majority, though they reach the same conclusions as to the constitutionality of the Porto Rican tariff act, do so by widely diverging lines of argument, which conflict on some of the most momentous principles involved. In brief, the finding of the court is that, while the islands ceded by Spain are not foreign territory and never were after the ratification of the treaty of Paris, they are not a portion of the United States, but merely possessions, whose relations to the United States are much the same as those of the British colonies to the mother country. To reach this conclusion the majority were forced to set aside decisions by Marshall that never before in the history of the court have been so much as questioned. Justice Brown goes so far as to hold that in the control of the new territory Congress is superior to the restrictions of the Constitution, and may invoke its aid or ignore it, as the legislators see fit. Three of his colleagues, who agree with him in holding that Porto Rico does not come within the scope of the Constitution when it prescribes that all duties and taxes shall be uniform throughout the United States, emphatically state their belief that in dealing with the islands Congress is limited by those clauses in the Constitution which safeguard the life, liberty, and property of the people. The four minority judges, while they concur in upholding this limitation, argue that it is absurd to grant this, and at the same time claim that9Congress may legislate unrestrained by the restriction against inequality of taxes and imposts. The two controversies that brought out these conflicting opinions are known as the De Lima and the Lowndes cases. The former is an action brought by De Lima to recover duties paid by him under protest on goods shipped into the United States from Porto Rico subsequent to the cession of the island to this country by the treaty of Paris and prior to the passage of the Foraker bill, placing a special duty on articles imported from the newly-acquired territory. The contention of the government was that Porto Rico was still foreign territory within the intent and meaning of the Dingley tariff bill.—The Salt Lake Herald.