Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 2).pdf/534

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508
NORTH DAKOTA REPORTS.

established rule of statutory construction. State v. Fraser, 1 N. D. 425. Besides, by overruling constitutional objections urged against the statute, the case will be in a position to be reviewed by the supreme court of the United States; while, on the other hand, should we declare against the validity of the statute, no such review could be had. The whole people will cheerfully acquiesce in the conclusions reached by the court of dernier ressort, and we are glad to be able conscientiously to so determine the case as to facilitate its review in that court. We have limited our inquiries and conclusions to the one matter of the right of legislative control of public warehouses and elevators to the extent of prescribing maximum charges, and have not considered possible questions which, under other averments of fact, might arise touching the validity and binding force of the rules and regulations prescribed by the commissioners for the government of the public warehouses of the state. We think no such question can legitimately arise under the pleadings, and no such question is presented in the briefs of counsel. The order sustaining the demurrer to appellant’s answer, and directing the peremptory writ of mandamus to issue, is affirmed. It will be so ordered.

Bartholomew, J., concurs.

Corliss, C. J., (concurring specially.) I agree to the judgment in this case with reluctance. I am of opinion that the doctrine of the Munn and Budd Cases is unsound. I admit that all authority is in favor of the opinion in this case, but I have an abiding conviction that the dissenting opinions in the Munn and Budd Cases embody the true conception of American liberty. While it is true, as an abstract proposition, that the state courts may give to that liberty a wider scope than the federal courts give to it, yet the question is so national in its character that it occurs to me that there should be only one tule for the whole nation. That rule, of course, must be for the present, and while those cases stand, the rule that the nation’s highest tribunal enunciated in the Munn Case, and which it has very recently affirmed in the Budd Case in the most emphatic manner, although by a bare majority. Liberty should