Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 2).pdf/230

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204
NORTH DAKOTA REPORTS.

The balance of the act, excepting §§ 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, and 24, “prescribes,” to quote the language of counsel for plaintiff in error, “remedies, procedure, etc., in furtherance of the enforcement of the prohibition of the unlawful sale as a beverage.” The excepted sections regulate the sale of such liquors for medicinal, mechanical, scientific, and sacramental purposes. This bare statement ought to suffice to show how utterly groundless is the claim that the act embraces more than one subject. It relates solely to the one subject of regulating the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors. A system which prohibits the sale for certain purposes, and permits a sale for certain other purposes, under specific restrictions and regulations, is a system whose single purpose and operation are the regulation of the sale of intoxicating liquors. Every provision of the law is subsidiary to and in furtherance of this great object. There is nothing in the law foreign to this single subject. All the provisions of it converge to this one point. It is difficult to find in the books a case where it has been claimed that an act embraced more than a single subject with less to justify the claim than in the case at bar. There is nothing in the point that the constitution has, by prohibiting the sale of intoxicating liquors as a beverage, made that a subject distinct from all other control of the traffic in such liquors. A constitution cannot make foreign to each other those provisions which are in their nature germane; nor can any such purpose be tortured by construction out of this constitutional inhibition. It is hardly necessary to cite authorities in so plain a case. It is impossible to refer to all which sustain our view. We will select only a few out of the great mass: Hronek v. People, 134 Ill. 139, 24 N. E. Rep. 861; Evansville v. Bayard, 39 Ind. 450; Ramagnano v. Crook, 85 Ala. 226,3 South. Rep. 845; Fahey v. State, 27 Tex. App. 140, 11 8. W. Rep. 108; Hart v. Scott, 50 N. J. Law 585, 15 Atl. Rep. 272; Easton v. Railroad Co., 52 N. J. Law 267, 19 Atl. Rep. 722; State v. Madison, 43 Minn. 438, 45 N. W. Rep. 856; People v. Haug, — Mich. —, 37 N. W. Rep. 21. It seems to be urged that the law is a prohibition law, and also a law regulating the liquor traffic. It is only the latter. Every law regulating the sale of liquor is necessarily prohibitory in some