Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 2).pdf/119

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VERMONT LOAN & TRUST CO. v. WHITHED.
93

special." Suth. St. Const. § 121. "Special laws are those made for individual cases, or for less than a class requiring laws appropriate to its peculiar condition and circumstances." Id § 127. An inspection of the statute under consideration at once discloses that it does not come within the above definition of a special law. Nor does it grant any privileges or immunities to any citizen that would not equally extend to any other citizen coming within the class to which the exception applies. It is a statute general in form and general in its nature. If its operation be in any manner special, or if it grant privileges or immunities to any citizen or class of citizens that are not granted to all, it is because the statute is not literally uniform in its operation; and it becomes important to determine whether this lack of uniformity is of such a character as to violate the constitutional provision requiring all laws of a general nature to have a uniform operation. This provision is found in the constitution of a number of the states, and it has been before the courts in a large number of cases, and it has also been held that this provision was intended to prevent the granting to any citizen or class of citizens of privileges or immunities which, upon the same terms, shall not belong to all citizens. McGill v. State, 34 Ohio St. 237; Suth. St. Const. § 121; French v. Teschemacher, 24 Cal. 544. A "general law," as the term is used in this constitutional provision, is a public law of universal interest to the people of the state, and embracing within its provisions all the citizens of the state, or all of a certain class or classes of citizens. It must relate to persons and things as a class, and not to particular persons or things of a class. It must embrace the whole subject, or a whole class, and must not be restricted to any particular locality within the state. Case v. Dillon, 2 Ohio St. 607; Kelley v. State, 6 Ohio St. 269; Wheeler v. Philadelphia, 77 Pa. St. 338; State v. Wilcox, 45 Mo. 453; Van Riper v. Parson, 40 N. J. Law 123; In re Boyle, 9 Wis. 240; McGill v. State, 34 Ohio St. 237. The uniform operation required by this provision does not mean universal operation. A general law may be constitutional, and yet operate in fact only upon a very limited number of persons or things, or within a limited territory. But, so far