Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 2).pdf/231

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NORTH DAKOTA v HAAS.
205

respects. A license law prohibits all who are unable to procure slicense. It usually embodies a prohibition of sales to minors, drunkards, etc. It forbids sales on the Sabbath and between specified hours of the day on week days. The law in question only prohibits the sale as a beverage. A case peculiarly in point is Hart v. Scott, 50 N. J. Law, 585, 15 Atl. Rep. 272. It was there insisted that the title, “An act to regulate the sale of intoxicating and brewed liquors,” did not express the provision in the body of the act, which prohibited the sale of such liquors. by the small measure. In adjudging this contention unsound the court said: “Assuming that the extreme effect of this legis- lation is to forbid the sale by small measure, in my judgment it must be regarded as a law regulating the sale of intoxicating and brewed liquors. It regulates the sale by prohibiting it in small quantities. Every license law is to some extent a prohibitory law. It prohibits the sale by all persons who have no license. But it is said that the prohibition is absolute within the sphere in. which the law operates—that is, as to the sale by the small measure. So is the law which absolutely forbids the sale by the small measure on Sunday or election day. So would be a law which prohibited a sale to minors, or within a certain distance from a college. Such laws are, therefore, none the less regulations of the liquor traffic. They operate as a check—as a partial restraint—upon the sale, not an absolute inhibition, and are in the strictest sense regulations. The regulation becomes more or less stringent as you increase or diminish the extent to which it operates to prevent sales, but it reaches the point of prohibition and ceases to be regulation only when it wholly inhibits the traffic.” There is only one point in which it is claimed that the title fails to express what is embodied in the act, The title is as follows: “An act to prescribe penalties for the unlawful manufacture, sale, and keeping for sale intoxicating liquors, and to regulate the sale, barter, and giving away for medical, scientific, and mechanical purposes.” It is urged that it is not disclosed by this title that the act declares, as it does, the manufacture, sale, and keeping for sale of liquors as a beverage to be unlawful. But the constitution had already made that declaration, and all that was needed to supplement the