Opinion of the Court. others, in their application to the case before us, they all show that, in the judgment of the legislative branch of the government, it is often desirable, if not essential for the protection of the interests of our people, against the unfriendly or discriminating regulations established by foreign governments, in the interests of their people, to invest the President with large discretion in matters arising out of the execution of statutes relating to trade and commerce with other nations. If the decision in the case of The Brig Aurora had never been rendered, the practical construction of the Constitution, as given by so many acts of Congress, and embracing almost the entire period of our national existence, should not be overruled, unless upon a conviction that such legislation was clearly incompatible with the supreme law of the land. Stuart v. Laird, 1 Cranch, 299, 309; Martin v. Hunter, 1 Wheat. 304, 351; Cooley v. Port Wardens, 12 How. 299, 315; Lithographic Co. v. Sarony, 111 U. S. 53, 57; The Laura, 114 U. S. 411, 416. The authority given to the President by the act of June 4, 1794, to lay an embargo on all ships and vessels in the ports of the United States, "whenever, in his opinion, the public safety shall so require," and under regulations, to be continued or revoked "whenever he shall think proper;" by the act of February 9, 1799, to remit and discontinue, for the time being, the restraints and prohibitions which Congress had prescribed with respect to commercial intercourse with the French Republic, "if he shall deem it expedient and consistent with the interest of the United States," and "to revoke such order, whenever, in his opinion, the interest of the United States shall require;" by the act of December 19, 1806, to suspend, for a named time, the operation of the non-importation act of the same year, "if in his judgment the public interest should (Codes Egyptiens, Alexandrie, 1875,) the proclamation of suspension contemplated by the act of March 23, 1874, was issued by President Grant on the 27th of March, 1876, 19 Stat. 662; the quota of foreign judges assigned to the United States was filled by the Khedive upon the nomination of the President; and United States citizens became justiciable by this mixed tribunal.— [REPORTER.] Opinion of the Court. require it;" by the act of May 1, 1810, to revive a former act, as to Great Britain or France, if either country had not, by a named day, so revoked or modified its edicts as not "to violate the neutral commerce of the United States;" by the acts of March 3, 1815, and May 31, 1830, to declare the repeal, as to any foreign nation, of the several acts imposing duties on the tonnage of ships and vessels, and on goods, wares and merchandise imported into the United States, when he should be "satisfied" that the discriminating duties of such foreign nations, "so far as they operate to the disadvantage of the United States," had been abolished; by the act of March 6, 1866, to declare the provisions of the act forbidding the importation into this country of neat cattle and the hides of neat cattle, to be inoperative, "whenever in his judgment" their importation "may be made without danger of the introduction or spread of contagious or infectious disease among the cattle of the United States;" must be regarded as unwarranted by the Constitution, if the contention of the appellants, in respect to the third section of the act of October 1, 1890, be sustained. That Congress cannot delegate legislative power to the President is a principle universally recognized as vital to the integrity and maintenance of the system of government ordained by the Constitution. The act of October 1, 1890, in the particular under consideration, is not inconsistent with that principle. It does not, in any real sense, invest the President with the power of legislation. For the purpose of securing reciprocal trade with countries producing and exporting sugar, molasses, coffee, tea and hides, Congress itself determined that the provisions of the act of October 1, 1890, permitting the free introduction of such articles, should be suspended as to any country producing and exporting them, that imposed exactions and duties on the agricultural and other products of the United States, which the President deemed, that is, which he found to be, reciprocally unequal and unreasonable. Congress itself prescribed, in advance, the duties to be levied, collected and paid, on sugar, molasses, coffee, tea or hides, produced by or exported from such designated Opinion of the Court. country, while the suspension lasted. Nothing involving the expediency or the just operation of such legislation was left to the determination of the President. The words, "he may deem," in the third section, of course, implied that the President would examine the commercial regulations of other countries producing and exporting sugar, molasses, coffee, tea and hides, and form a judgment as to whether they were reciprocally equal and reasonable, or the contrary, in their effect upon American products. But when he ascertained the fact that duties and exactions, reciprocally unequal and unreasonable, were imposed upon the agricultural or other products of the United States by a country producing and exporting sugar, molasses, coffee, tea or hides, it became his duty to issue a proclamation declaring the suspension, as to that country, which Congress had determined should occur. He had no discretion in the premises except in respect to the duration of the suspension so ordered. But that related only to the enforcement of the policy established by Congress. As the suspension was absolutely required when the President ascertained the existence of a particular fact, it cannot be said that in ascertaining that fact and in issuing his proclamation, in obedience to the legislative will, he exercised the function of making laws. Legislative power was exercised when Congress declared that the suspension should take effect upon a named contingency. What the President was required to do was simply in execution of the act of Congress. It was not the making of law. He was the mere agent of the law-making department to ascertain and declare the event upon which its expressed will was to take effect. It was a part of the law itself as it left the hands of Congress that the provisions, full and complete in themselves, permitting the free introduction of sugars, molasses, coffee, tea and hides, from particular countries, should be suspended, in a given contingency, and that in case of such suspensions certain duties should be imposed. "The true distinction," as Judge Ranney speaking for the Supreme Court of Ohio has well said, "is between the delegation of power to make the law, which necessarily involves a discretion as to what it shall be, and conferring authority or Opinion of the Court. discretion as to its execution, to be exercised under and in pursuance of the law. The first cannot be done; to the latter no valid objection can be made." Cincinnati, Wilmington &c. Railroad v. Commissioners, 1 Ohio St. 88. In Moers v. City of Reading, 21 Penn. St. 188, 202, the language of the court was: "Half the statutes on our books are in the alternative, depending on the discretion of some person or persons to whom is confided the duty of determining whether the proper occasion exists for executing them. But it cannot be said that the exercise of such discretion is the making of the law." So, in Locke's Appeal, 72 Penn. St. 491, 498: "To assert that a law is less than a law, because it is made to depend on a future event or act, is to rob the legislature of the power to act wisely for the public welfare whenever a law is passed relating to a state of affairs not yet developed, or to things future and impossible to fully know." The proper distinction the court said was this: "The legislature cannot delegate its power to make a law; but it can make a law to delegate a power to determine some fact or state of things upon which the law makes, or intends to make, its own action depend. To deny this would be to stop the wheels of government. There are many things upon which wise and useful legislation must depend which cannot be known to the law-making power, and, must, therefore, be a subject of inquiry and determination outside of the halls of legislation." What has been said is equally applicable to the objection that the third section of the act invests the President with treaty-making power. The court is of opinion that the third section of the act of October 1, 1890, is not liable to the objection that it transfers legislative and treaty-making power to the President. Even if it were, it would not, by any means, follow that other parts of the act, those which directly imposed duties upon articles imported, would be inoperative. But we need not in this connection enter upon the consideration of that question. Third. The act of October 1, 1890, c. 1244, sec. 1, par. 231, "Schedule E-Sugar," provides that "on and after July first, eighteen hundred and ninety-one, and until July first, Opinion of the Court. nineteen hundred and five, there shall be paid, from any moneys in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, under the provisions of section three thousand six hundred and eightynine of the Revised Statutes, to the producer of sugar testing not less than ninety degrees by the polariscope, from beets, Sorghum or sugar-cane grown within the United States, or from maple sap produced within the United States, a bounty of two cents per pound; and upon such sugar testing less than ninety degrees by the polariscope, and not less than eighty degrees, a bounty of one and three-fourths cents per pound, under such rules and regulations as the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, with the approval of the Secretary of the Treasury, shall prescribe." 26 Stat. 567, 583. Appellants contend that Congress has no power to appropriate money from the Treasury for the payment of these bounties, and that the provisions for them have such connection with the system established by the act of 1890 that the entire act must be held inoperative and void. The question of constitutional power thus raised depends principally, if not altogether, upon the scope and effect of that clause of the Constitution giving Congress power "to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States." Art. 1, sec. 8. It would be difficult to suggest a question of larger importance, or one the decision of which would be more far-reaching. But the argument that the validity of the entire act depends upon the validity of the bounty clause is so obviously founded in error that we should not be justified in giving the question of constitutional power, here raised, that extended examination which a question of such gravity would, under some circumstances, demand. Even if the position of the appellants with respect to the power of Congress to pay these bounties were sustained, it is clear that the parts of the act in which they are interested, namely, those laying duties upon articles imported, would remain in force. "It is an elementary principle," this court has said, "that the same statute may be in part constitutional and in part unconstitutional, and that if the parts are wholly inde |