Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 2).pdf/306

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280
NORTH DAKOTA REPORTS.

Law 82, 11 Atl. Rep. 185; Bowyer v. Camden, 50 N. J. Law 87, 11 Atl Rep, 137; Manning v. Klippel, 9 Or. 367; Miller v. Kister, 68 Cal. 142, 8 Pac. Rep. 813; Township of Lodi v. State, 51 N. J. Law 402,18 Atl. Rep. 749. In this last case the court said: “The rule is that in any classification for the purpose of a general law all must be included and made subject to it, and none omitted that stand upon the same footing regarding the subject of legislation. To omit one so circumstanced is as fatal a defect as to include but one of a number. In Davis v. Clark, 106 Pa St. 384, the court said: “It was not then a general act applicable to every part of the commonwealth. It did apply toa great number of counties, but there is no dividing line between a local and a general statute. It must be one or the other. If it apply to the whole state, it is general. If to a part only, it is local. Asa legal principle, it is as effectually local when it applies to sixty-five counties out of the sixty-seven as if it applied to one county only. The exclusion of a single county from the operation of the act makes it local.” To same effect is State v. Township of Mullica, 51 N. J. Law 412, 17 Atl. Rep. 941. The case of People v. Plank Road Co., 86 N. Y. 1, is cited as holding a contrary doctrine. We do not so construe that decision. But we would have no hesitation in declaring that doctrine unsound if it adjudged an act to be not special, so far as the constitutional inhibition against special legislation is concerned, be cause it related to all except two counties in the state where there was no reason for classification. If an act is not special because it relates to all except a single county in a state, without any reason for the classification, then the legislature can accomplish indirectly what it is beyond their power to bring about by direct steps. Whenever it is desired to introduce a new rule as to a single county, a general law can be passed establishing that rule in all the counties, and then another law can be enacted re-establishing the old rule in all counties except the one singled out to be governed by the new rule. The first law would be clearly general, and, under what it is claimed is the New York doctrine, the second act could not be assailed as special legislation. This would, indeed, be an ingenious mode of neutralizing the constitutional prohibition against special legis-