62. Interstate commerce cannot be taxed by the State even though the same amount of tax should be laid by the State on commerce carried on wholly within its limits.[159] The right involved is not a State right. “To carry on interstate commerce is not a franchise or privilege granted by the State; it is a right which every citizen of the United States is entitled to exercise under the Constitution and laws of the United States.”[160] That persons engaged in such commerce are incorporated under the laws of a State and thereby possess facilities for carrying on their business cannot deprive them of their fundamental right as against the State, but Congress, by its power to regulate commerce, may prescribe conditions under which their business is carried on, or by regulation, destroy their business entirely.[161] Thus a State cannot, by a license tax, exclude from its jurisdiction a foreign corporation engaged in interstate commerce, or impose any burdens upon such commerce within its limits.[162] But it is within the police power of a State to protect the lives and health of its people, and to protect property through laws suppressing nuisances; prohibiting manufactures injurious to the public health; prohibiting the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors; prohibiting lotteries, gambling, horse-racing, or anything else which the Legislature considers opposed to the public welfare.[163] A local regulation limiting the speed of trains on entering a town or city, or approaching a curve or a bridge, or requiring a train to stop at a particular place, comes within the exercise of the police power of the State.[164] 63. The power of a State over commerce being exclusive only as to commerce strictly internal and within its own boundaries,—that is, within its own jurisdiction,—it follows that “a State can no more regulate or impede commerce among the several States than it can regulate or impede commerce with foreign nations.”[165] Taxation, by a State, of goods coming into it from another State, would destroy freedom of trade within the nation, which Congress has seen fit shall remain undisturbed. This freedom of trade is national in character, and interference with it, by a State, would violate a function and defeat the purpose of nationality: that is, such violation would prevent the people of the United States from realizing their own sovereignty.