Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1893 edition. Excerpt:...in a quasi public business, the legislatures x)f the states, exercising a power universally conceded to be in them, endeavored to control such corporations by law. By a solemn judicial declaration of the Supreme Court this power was conceded to be a legislative one. In the case of Cherokee Nation vs. South Kan. R. R. Co., 135 U. S., it said: "The question is no longer an open one as to whether a railroad is a public highway, established primarily for the convenience of the people and to subserve public ends, and therefore subject to government control and regulation. It is because it is a public highway and subject to such control that the corporation by-which it is constructed and by which it is to be maintained may be permitted, under legislative sanction, to appropriate private property for the purposes of a right of way, upon making just compensation to the owner, in the mode prescribed by law." But the court soon recalled this admission, asserted that the power was judicial, not legislative, and made itself the guardian of the railroads and the supervisor of the state legislatures. Chicago, etc., R'y vs. Minn., 134 U. S. Having denied the truth of history and made this government a nation created by its people, the Supreme Court has been unable to restrain the logical deductions necessarily flowing from the premises thus established. It declared the national government supreme only in the exercise of the powers expressly granted or necessarily implied, then supreme over all subjects referred directly to it by the constitution, then this supremacy was extended over subjects impliedly under its control, and finally absolute power was conceded to it over those matters demanding the attention of a sovereign, unless the exercise...