In Bowman v. Chicago & Northwestern Railway, 125 U.S. 465 (1888), the point, and the only point decided, was that a statute of Iowa, which forbade common carriers to bring intoxicating liquors into the State from any other State, without first obtaining a certificate from a county officer of Iowa, that the consignee was authorized by the laws of Iowa to sell such liquors, was an unconstitutional regulation of interstate commerce. While Mr. Justice Field in his separate opinion (p. 507) intimated, and three dissenting justices (pp. 514, 515) feared, that the decision was in effect inconsistent with the decision in the License Cases, 5 How. 504, 578 (U. S. 1847), Mr. Justice Matthews, who delivered the judgment of the majority of the court, not only cautiously avoided committing the court to any such conclusion, but took great pains to mark the essential difference between the two decisions. On the one hand, after making a careful analysis of the opinions in the License Cases, he said: "From this analysis it is apparent that the question presented in this case was not decided in the License Cases. The point in judgment in them was strictly confined to the right of the States to prohibit the sale of intoxicating liquor after it had been brought within their territorial limits. The right to bring it within the States was not questioned." On the other hand, in stating the reasons for holding the statute of Iowa, prohibiting the transportation of liquors from another State, not to be a legitimate exertion of the police power of the State of Iowa, he said: "It is not an exercise of the jurisdiction of the State over persons and property within its limits. On the contrary, it is an attempt to exert that jurisdiction over persons and property within the limits of other States. It seeks to prohibit and stop their passage and importation into its own limits, and is designed as a regulation for the conduct of commerce before the merchandise is brought to its border." "But the right to prohibit sales, so far as conceded to the States, arises only after the act of transportation has terminated, because the sales which the State may forbid are of things within its jurisdiction. Its power over them does not begin to operate until they are brought within the territorial limits which circumscribe it." 125 U.S. 479, 498, 499. In the opinion of the majority of the court in that case, it was noted that the omission of Congress to legislate might not so readily justify an inference of its intention to exclude state legislation in matters affecting interstate commerce, as in those affecting foreign commerce; Mr. Justice Matthews saying: "The organization of our state and federal system of government is such that the people of the several States can have no relations with foreign powers in respect to commerce or any other subject, except through the government of the United States and its laws and treaties. The same necessity perhaps does not exist equally in reference to commerce among the States. The power conferred upon Congress to regulate commerce among the States is indeed contained in the same clause of the Constitution which confers upon it power to regulate commerce with foreign nations. The grant is conceived in the same terms, and the two powers are undoubtedly of the same class and character and equally extensive. The actual exercise of its power over either subject is equally and necessarily exclusive of that of the States, and paramount over all the powers of the States; so that state legislation, however legitimate in its origin or object, when it conflicts with the positive legislation of Congress, or its intention reasonably implied from its silence, in respect to the subject of commerce of both kinds, must fail. And yet, in respect to commerce among the States, it may be, for the reason already assigned, that the same inference is not always to be drawn from the absence of congressional legislation as might be in the case of commerce with foreign nations. The question, therefore, may be still considered in each case as it arises, whether the fact that Congress has failed in the particular instance to provide by law a regulation of commerce among the States is conclusive of its intention that the subject shall be free from all positive regulation, or that, until it positively interferes, such commerce may be left to be freely dealt with by the respective States." 125 U.S. 482, 483.