The first case to come before the Court in which the issues discussed above were canvassed at all thoroughly was Champion _v._ Ames,[495] involving the act of 1895 "for the suppression of lotteries."[496] An earlier act excluding lottery tickets from the mails had been upheld in the earlier case of In re Rapier,[497] on the proposition that Congress clearly had the power to see that the very facilities furnished by it were not put to bad uses. But in the case of commerce the facilities are not ordinarily furnished by the National Government, and the right to engage in foreign and interstate commerce comes from the Constitution itself, or is anterior to it. How difficult the Court found the question produced by the act of 1895, forbidding any person to bring within the United States or to cause to be "carried from one State to another" any lottery ticket, or an equivalent thereof, "for the purpose of disposing of the same," is shown by the fact that the case was thrice argued before the Court, and the fact that the Court's decision finally sustaining the act was a five-to-four decision. The opinion of the Court, on the other hand, prepared by Justice Harlan, marked an almost unqualified triumph at the time for the view that Congress's power to regulate commerce among the States includes the power to prohibit it, especially to supplement and support State legislation enacted under the police power.[498] Early in the opinion extensive quotation is made from Chief Justice Marshall's opinion in Gibbons _v._ Ogden,[499] with special stress upon the definition there given of the phrase "to regulate." Justice Johnson's assertion on the same occasion is also given: "The power of a sovereign State over commerce, * * *, amounts to nothing more than, a power to limit and restrain it at pleasure." Further along is quoted with evident approval Justice Bradley's statement in Brown _v._ Houston,[500] that "the power to regulate commerce among the several States is granted to Congress in terms as absolute as is the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations." NATIONAL PROHIBITIONS AND STATE POLICE POWER