Ficklen v. Shelby County Taxing District‪.‬

it was held that section 16 of c. 96 of the laws of Tennessee of 1881, enacting that: "All drummers and all persons not having a regular licensed house of business in the Taxing District of Shelby County offering for sale, or selling goods, wares, or merchandise therein by sample, shall be required to pay to the county trustee the sum of $10 per week, or $25 per month for such privilege," so far as it applied to persons soliciting the sale of goods on behalf of individuals or firms doing business in another State, was a regulation of commerce among the States and violated the provision of the Constitution of the United States which grants to Congress the power to make such regulations. The question involved was stated by Mr. Justice Bradley, who delivered the opinion of the court, to be: "Whether it is competent for a State to levy a tax or impose any other restriction upon the citizens or inhabitants of other States, for selling or seeking to sell their goods in said State before they are introduced therein," (p. 494;) and it was decided that it was not. At the same time it was conceded that commerce among the States might be legitimately incidentally affected by state laws, when they, among other things, provided for "the imposition of taxes upon persons residing within the State or belonging to its population, and upon avocations and employments pursued therein, not directly connected with foreign or interstate commerce, or with some other employment or business exercised under authority of the Constitution and laws of the United States." And it was further stated: "To say that the tax, if invalid as against drummers from other States, operates as a discrimination against the drummers of Tennessee, against whom it is conceded to be valid, is no argument, because the State is not bound to tax its own drummers; and if it does so whilst having no power to tax those of other States, it acts of its own free will, and is itself the author of such discrimination. As before said, the State may tax its own internal commerce; but that does not give it any right to tax interstate commerce," (p. 499).