person may receive a compensation for procuring a loan when such compensation, and the interest stated in the contract, together do not exceed 12 per cent. per annum in the aggregate. In a transaction where no middleman was employed, a note' was given for $575, due in five years, with 7 per cent. interest. The borrower received 8500, and no more, $75 being by agreement retained for making the loan; and the amount so retained, added to the 7 per cent., stated in the note, did not exceed 12 per cent. on $500 for five years. Held, that if the transaction was usurious, under § 4, it was not saved by the provisions of § 7.
2. A public law of universal interest to the people of the state, and embracing all the citizens of the state, or all of a certain class or certain classes of citizens, and not limited to any particular locality, is a general, and not a special, law, as the term is used in the constitutional inhibition against special legislation.
3. A statute that grants no privileges or immunities, except such as would apply to all citizens under the circumstances and conditions expressed in the statute, does not violate the constitutional provision against granting special privileges and immunities.
4. The constitutional requirement that all laws of a general nature shall have a uniform operation is satisfied if the benefits and burdens of such law fall equally upon all members of the class or classes upon which it does operate.
5. The legislature has the right to classify persons or subjects for the purposes of legislation. Such classification must not be arbitrary, but must be based upon such differences in situation, condition, and purposes between the persons and things included in the class and those excluded therefrom as fairly and naturally suggest the propriety of, and necessity for, different or exclusive legislation in the line of the statute in which the classification appears.
6. The dealings of building and loan associations with their own stockholders differ from ordinary loan transactions to such an extent as to warrant the legislature in excepting such associations, as to such dealings, from the operation of the provisions of the general usury law.
7. In construing a particular section of a statute, it is the duty of the court to ascertain the intent of the legislature, and for that purpose it should consider the entire statute, and its general subject-matter, as well as all other statutes in pari materia; and, where the court is satisfied that adherence to the strict letter of the law would defeat the object and intent of the legislature, it is the duty of the court to regard the intent, even where to do so it is compelled to restrain the application of the letter.
(Opinion Filed July 14, 1891.)
