not been very marked. The responsibility for the failure falls about equally on each of the three of the departments of the government.

Amendatory acts were passed by Congress in 1889, 1893, 1903 and 1906. "The first of these was that of 1889 and gave a shipper an additional summary and effective remedy by writ of mandamus, to compel the carrier to furnish equal facilities. That of 1893 remedied the difficulty growing out of the inability to enforce self-incriminating testimony. In 1903 was enacted the so-called Expedition Act, which materially expedited the procedure in suits brought by the United States, or suits prosecuted by direction of the attorney general in the name of the Interstate Commerce Commission. The Amendatory Act of February 19, 1903, known as the Elkin's Law, made very important changes, and materially enforced the provisions against discriminations, in that it made the published rates conclusive against the carrier, every deviation therefrom being punishable. The scope of the act was also materially extended as to the parties subject to its provisions. Fine was substituted for imprisonment in the penal provisions of the act. None of these amendments have affected the rate-making power of the Commission."62

SECTION 75. RECENT STATUTES AND DECISIONS.

The last amendatory act (to date) of the Interstate Commerce Act, was that of June 29, 1906. The most important provision of this act is the one giving to the commission the power to fix maximum rates. Most of the other effective provisions contained in the original draft of the bill were stricken out before its final passage.

Judson on Interstate Commerce, p. 62.

A number of important cases, involving interstate commerce in some form or other, have recently come before the Federal courts. The prosecution of the Standard Oil Company in 1907 attracted great attention, but as the decision has not yet been reviewed by the Supreme Court, it will not be considered here.

Two important decisions have just been handed down by the Supreme Court, the cases being those of In the Matter of Edward T. Young, Petitioner, and Thomas F. Hunter, Sheriff of Buncombe County, State of North Carolina vs. James H. Wood. The legislatures of both Minnesota and North Carolina had passed acts regulating the rates to be charged by railroads in the states, and inflicting heavy penalties for the violation of such rates. Injunctions were issued by the Circuit courts of the United States against the enforcement of the statutes by the states. It is impossible here to consider the many questions of law raised in these cases, but the decisions were against the constitutionality of the state acts.

Under existing Federal statutes and decisions, any effective regulation of common carriers seems impossible either by state or natiɔn.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE BILL OF RIGHTS.

SECTION 76. MEANING AND ORIGIN OF THE TERM.

The term "Bill of Rights" was first used as the title of the statute passed by the English Parliament after the Revolution of 1688-9, for the purpose of securing to the English people those political and civil rights of which the crown had attempted to deprive them during the Stuart period. It was the last of the "three great charters of English liberty." This term is now applied to that portion of a constitution designed to guarantee the individual rights of the citizen and to protect him and his property against oppression by the government.

Upon the submission of the United States Constitution to the States for their ratification, one of the strongest objections, urged by its opponents, against its adoption, was the absence therefrom of a Bill of Rights; the only provisions in the original Constitution which would fall under this head, being the second and third clauses of the ninth section of the first article relative to habeas corpus, ex post facto laws and bills of attainder, and the third section of the third article on the subject of treason. The state of Massachusetts (in whose Constitutional Convention this absence of a Bill of Rights was made the basis of a particularly bitter attack on the proposed Constitution) followed its ratification of the new Constitution with the proposal of various amendments thereto, designed to supply this

defect. This example was followed by several of the other States and from this action grew the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution; the first eight of which in connection with the second and third clauses of the ninth section of the first article of the Constitution, the third section of the third article, and the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth amendments constitute the Bill of Rights in the United States Constitution.

The Bill of Rights in the United States Constitution was expressed almost of necessity in broad general terms; and its framers mainly employed in their work phrases and maxims already well known in English history. Their original English meaning, however, cannot always be held to follow them into the Federal Constitution. "It necessarily happened, therefore, that as these broad and general maxims of liberty and justice held in our system a different place and performed a different function from their position and office in English Constitutional history and law, they would receive and justify a corresponding and more comprehensive interpretation. Applied in England only as guards against executive usurpation and tyranny, here they have become bulwarks also against arbitrary legislation, but, in that application, as it would be incongruous to measure and restrict them by the ancient customary English law, they must be held to guarantee not particular forms of procedure but the very substance of individual rights to life, liberty, and property." A liberal and elastic interpretation must thus be given the United States Bill of Rights; one which will tend to secure substantial rights of liberty and safety to the individual, rather than one

1 Hurtado vs. California, 110 U. S. 516, 532.