Restraint upon the right of locomotion was a well-known feature of the slavery abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment. A first requisite of the right to appropriate the use of another man was to become the master of his natural power of motion, and by a mayhem therein of the common law to require the whole community to be on the alert to restrain that power. That this is not exaggeration is shown by the language of the court in Eaton v. Vaughan, 9 Missouri, 734.
Granting that by involuntary servitude, as prohibited in the Thirteenth Amendment, is intended some institution, viz., custom, etc., of that sort, and not primarily mere scattered trespasses against liberty committed by private persons, yet, considering what must be the social tendency in at least large parts of the country, it is “appropriate legislation” against such an institution to forbid any action by private persons which in the light of our history may reasonably be apprehended to tend, on account of its being incidental to quasi public occupations, to create an institution.
Therefore the above act of 1875, in prohibiting persons from violating the rights of other persons to the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations of inns and public conveyances, for any reason turning merely upon the race or color of the latter, partakers of the specific character of certain contemporaneous solemn and effective action by the United States to which it was a sequel—and is constitutional.
Mr. William M. Randolph for Robinson and wife, plaintiffs in error.
Where the constitution guarantees a right, Congress is empowered to pass the legislation appropriate to give effect to that right. Prigg v. Pennsylvania, 16 Peters, 539; Ableman v. Booth, 21 How. 506; United States v. Reese, 92 U. S. 214.
Whether Mr. Robinson’s rights were created by the Constitution, or only guaranteed by it, in either event the act of Congress, so far as it protects them is within the Constitution. Pensacola Telegraph Co. v. Western Union Tel. Co., 96 U. S. 1; The Passenger Cases, 7 Howard, 283; Crandall v. Nevada, 6 Wall. 35.
In Munn v. Illinois, 94 U. S. 113 the following propositions were affirmed:
“Under the powers inherent in every sovereignty, a government may regulate the conduct of its citizens toward each other, and, when necessary for the public good, the manner in which each shall use his own property.”
“It has, in the exercise of these powers, been customary in England, from time immemorial, and in this country from its first colonization, to regulate ferries, common carriers, hackmen, bakers, millers, wharfingers, innkeepers, etc.”
“When the owner of a property devotes it to a use in which the public has an interest, he in effect grants to the public an interest in such use, and must, to the extent of that interest, submit to be controlled by the public, for the common good, as long as he maintains the use.”