On the one hand, it is said that defendant was tried, convicted, and sentenced for a criminal offense. He suffered the punishment pronounced. The legislature has no power to thereafter add to that punishment. The right to practice medicine is a valuable property right. To deprive a man of it is in the nature of punishment, and, after the defendant has once fully atoned for his offense, a statute imposing this additional penalty is one simply increasing the punishment for the offense, and is ex post facto.

On the other, it is insisted that, within the acknowledged reach of the police power, a state may prescribe the qualifications of one engaged in any business so directly affecting the lives and health of the people as the practice of medicine. It may require both qualifications of learning and of good character, and, if it deems that one who has violated the criminal laws of the state is not possessed of sufficient good character, it can deny to such a one the right to practice medicine; and, further, it may make the record of a conviction conclusive evidence of the fact of the violation of the criminal law, and of the absence of the requisite good character. In support of this latter argument, counsel for the state, besides referring to the legislation of many states prescribing in a general way good character as one of the qualifications of a physician, has made a collection of special provisions as to the effect of a conviction of felony. In the footnote will be found his collection.

We are of opinion that this argument is the more applicable, and must control the answer to this question. No precise limits have been placed upon the police power of a state, and yet it is clear that legislation which simply defines the qualifications of one who attempts to practice medicine is a proper exercise of that power. Care for the public health is something confessedly belonging to the domain of that power. The physician is one whose relations to life and health are of the most intimate character. It is fitting, not merely that he should possess a knowledge of diseases and their remedies, but also that he should be one who may safely be trusted to apply those remedies. Character is as important a qualification as knowledge, and if the legislature may properly require a definite course of instruction, or a certain examination as to learning, it may with equal propriety prescribe what evidence of good character shall be furnished. These propositions have been often affirmed. In Dent v. West Virginia, 129 U. S. 114, 122, 9 Sup. Ct. 231, 233, 32 L. Ed. 623, it was said in respect to the qualifications of a physician: "The power of the

8 This collection of statutes (Hawker v. New York, 170 U. S. 191-193, 18 Sup. Ct. 574, 575, 42 L. Ed. 1004, 1005) shows that six or seven American states, Great Britain, and a number of self-governing British colonies give a similar effect to a conviction of felony.

state to provide for the general welfare of its people authorizes it to prescribe all such regulations as, in its judgment, will secure or tend to secure them against the consequences of ignorance and incapacity as well as of deception and fraud." * [Here follow quotations from various state decisions holding that a good moral character may be required as a condition of the right to practice medicine.]

But if a state may require good character as a condition of the practice of medicine, it may rightfully determine what shall be the evidences of that character. We do not mean to say that it has an arbitrary power in the matter, or that it can make a conclusive test of that which has no relation to character, but it may take whatever, according to the experience of mankind, reasonably tends to prove the fact and make it a test. County Seat of Linn Co., 15 Kan. 500-528. Whatever is ordinarily connected with bad character, or indicative of it, may be prescribed by the legislature as conclusive evidence thereof. It is not the province of the courts to say that other tests would be more satisfactory, or that the naming of other qualifications would be more conducive to the desired result. These are questions for the legislature to determine. "The nature and extent of the qualifications required must depend primarily upon the judgment of the state as to their necessity." Dent v. West Virginia, 129 U. S. 122, 9 Sup. Ct. 233, 32 L. Ed. 623.

It is not open to doubt that the commission of crime-the violation of the penal laws of a state-has some relation to the question of character. It is not, as a rule, the good people who commit crime. When the legislature declares that whoever has violated the criminal laws of the state shall be deemed lacking in good moral character, it is not laying down an arbitrary or fanciful rule, one having no relation to the subject-matter, but is only appealing to a well-recognized fact of human experience; and, if it may make a violation of criminal law a test of bad character, what more conclusive evidence of the fact of such violation can there be than a conviction duly had in one of the courts of the state? The conviction is, as between the state and the defendant, an adjudication of the fact. So, if the legislature enacts that one who has been convicted of crime shall no longer engage in the practice of medicine, it is simply applying the doctrine of res judicata, and invoking the conclusive adjudication of the fact that the man has violated the criminal law, and is presumptively, therefore, a man of such bad character as to render it unsafe to trust the lives and health of citizens to his care.

That the form in which this legislation is cast suggests the idea of the imposition of an additional punishment for past offenses is

not conclusive. We must look at the substance, and not the form; and the statute should be regarded as though it in terms declared that one who had violated the criminal laws of the state should be deemed of such bad character as to be unfit to practice medicine, and that the record of a trial and conviction should be conclusive evidence of such violation. All that is embraced in these propositions is condensed into the single clause of the statute, and it means that, and nothing more. The state is not seeking to further punish a criminal, but only to protect its citizens from physicians of bad character. The vital matter is not the conviction, but the violation of law. The former is merely the prescribed evidence of the latter. Suppose the statute had contained only a clause declaring that no one should be permitted to act as a physician who had violated the criminal laws of the state, leaving the question. of violation to be determined according to the ordinary rules of evidence; would it not seem strange to hold that that which conclusively established the fact effectually relieved from the consequences of such violation?

It is no answer to say that this test of character is not in all cases absolutely certain, and that sometimes it works harshly. Doubtless, one who has violated the criminal law may thereafter reform, and become in fact possessed of a good moral character. But the legislature has power in cases of this kind to make a rule of universal application, and no inquiry is permissible back of the rule to ascertain whether the fact of which the rule is made the absolute test does or does not exist. Illustrations of this are abundant. At common law, one convicted of crime was incompetent as a witness; and this rule was in no manner affected by the lapse of time since the commission of the offense, and could not be set aside by proof of a complete reformation. So, in many states a convict is debarred the privileges of an elector, and an act so debarring was held applicable to one convicted before its passage. Washington v. State, 75 Ala. 582, 51 Am. Rep. 479. In Foster v. Commissioners, 102 Cal. 483, 492, 37 Pac. 763, 41 Am. St. Rep. 194, the question was as to the validity of an ordinance revoking a license to sell liquor on the ground of misconduct prior to the issue of the license, and the ordinance was sustained. In commenting upon the terms of the ordinance the court said: "Though not an ex post facto law, it is retrospective in so far as it determines from the past conduct of the party his fitness for the proposed business. Felons are also excluded from obtaining such a license, not as an additional punishment, but because the conviction of a felony is evidence of the unfitness of such persons as a class; nor can we perceive why such evidence should be more conclusive of unfitness were the act done after the passage of the ordinance than if done before."

In a certain sense such a rule is arbitrary, but it is within the power of a legislature to perscribe a rule of general application based upon a state of things which is ordinarily evidence of the ultimate fact sought to be established. "It was obviously the province of the state legislature to provide the nature and extent of the legal presumption to be deduced from a given state of facts, and the creation by law of such presumptions is, after all, but an illustration of the power to classify." Jones v. Brim, 165 U. S. 180, 183, 17 Sup. Ct. 282, 41 L. Ed. 677.

Judgment affirmed.

[HARLAN, J., gave a dissenting opinion, in which concurred PECKHAM and MCKENNA, JJ.]

LAWS IMPAIRING THE OBLIGATIONS OF CONTRACTS 1

NEW ORLEANS WATERWORKS CO. v. LOUISIANA SUGAR REFINING CO.

(Supreme Court of United States, 1888. 125 U. S. 18, 8 Sup. Ct. 741, 31 L. Ed. 607.)

[Error to the Supreme Court of Louisiana, which had affirmed a judgment of the civil district court of New Orleans in favor of the Louisiana Sugar Company, denying an injunction against laying water pipes asked by the plaintiff. The facts appear in the opinion.]

Mr. Justice GRAY. The plaintiff, in its original petition, relied on a charter from the legislature of Louisiana, which granted to it the exclusive privilege of supplying the city of New Orleans and its inhabitants with water from the Mississippi river, but provided that the city council should not be thereby prevented from granting to any person "contiguous to the river" the privilege of laying pipes to the river for his own use. The only matter complained of by the plaintiff, as impairing the obligation of the contract contained in its charter, was an ordinance of the city council, granting to the Louisiana Sugar Refining Company permission to lay pipes from the river to its factory, which, the plaintiff contended, was not contiguous to the river. The Louisiana Sugar Refining Company, in its answer, alleged that its factory was contiguous to the river; that it had the right as a riparian proprietor to draw water from the river for its own use; that its pipes were being laid for its own use only; that the plaintiff had no exclusive privilege that would impair such use of the water by the defendant company; and that the rights and privileges claimed by the plaintiff would constitute a monopoly, and be therefore null and void. The evidence showed that the pipes of the defendant company were being laid exclusively for the use of its factory, and that no private ownership intervened between it and the river, but only a public street, and a broad quay or levee, owned by the city and open to the public, except that some large sugar sheds, occupied by lessees of the city, stood upon it, and that the tracks of a railroad were laid across it. * *

The only grounds on which the plaintiff in error attacks the judgment of the state court are that the court erred in its construction of the contract between the state and the plaintiff, contained

1 For discussion of principles, see Black, Const. Law (3d Ed.) §§ 279–294.