outside the State must govern their actions, except as they may have occasion to resort to the remedies which the State provides, or to deal with property situated within the State. It can have no authority upon the high seas beyond State lines, because there is the point of contact with other nations, and all international questions belong to the national government.1 It cannot provide for the punishment as crimes of acts committed beyond the State boundary, because such acts, if offences at all, must be offences against the sovereignty within whose limits they have been done.2 But if the consequences of an unlawful act committed outside the State have reached their ultimate and injurious result within it, it seems that the perpetrator may be punished as an offender against such State.3 Other Limitations of Legislative Authority. Besides the limitations of legislative authority to which we have referred, others exist which do not seem to call for special remark. Some of these are prescribed by constitutions,* * In Tyler v. People, 8 Mich. 320, it was held constitutional to punish in Michigan a homicide committed by a mortal blow in Canadian waters, from which death resulted in the State. In Morrissey v. People, 11 Mich. 327, the court was divided on the question whether the State could lawfully provide for the punishment of persons who, having committed larceny abroad, brought the stolen property within the State. The power was sustained in People v. Williams, 24 Mich. 156, where the larceny was in another State. And see State v. Main, 16 Wis. 398; Regina v. Hennessy, 35 Upper Canada R. 603. 4 The restrictions upon State legislative authority are much more extensive in some constitutions than in others. The Constitution of Missouri of 1865 had the following provision: "The General Assembly shall not pass special laws divorcing any named parties, or declaring any named person of age, or authorizing any named minor to sell, lease, or encumber his or her property, or providing for the sale of the real estate of any named minor or other person laboring under legal disability, by any executor, administrator, guardian, trustee, or other person, or establishing, locating, altering the course, or effecting the construction of roads, or the building or repairing of bridges, or establishing, altering, or vacating any street, avenue, or alley in any city or town, or extending the time for the assessment or collection of taxes, or otherwise relieving any assessor or collector of taxes from the due performance of his official duties, or giving effect to in * [* 129] but others spring from the very nature of free government. The latter must depend for their enforcement upon legislative wisdom, discretion, and conscience. The legislature is to make laws for the public good, and not for the benefit of formal or invalid wills or deeds, or 51 Mo. 288; St. Louis v. Shields, 62 legalizing, except as against the State, Mo. 247. Compare Hess v. Pegg, the unauthorized or invalid acts of 7 Nev. 23; Darling v. Rogers, 7 Kan. any officer, or granting to any indi- 592; Ex parte Pritz, 9 Iowa, 30. vidual or company the right to lay Where the legislature is forbidden to down railroad tracks in the streets of pass special or local laws regulating any city or town, or exempting any county or township business, a special property of any named person or cor- act allowing and ordering payment of poration from taxation. The General a particular claim is void, even though Assembly shall pass no special law for the claim, being merely an equitable any case for which provision can be one, cannot be audited by any existing made by a general law, but shall pass board. Williams v. Bidleman, 7 Nev. general laws providing, so far as it 68. See Darling v. Rogers, 7 Kan. may deem necessary, for the cases 592. An act creating a criminal enumerated in this section, and for all court for a particular county is not in other cases where a general law can conflict with the constitutional probe made applicable." Art. 4, § 27. hibition of special legislation. Eitel We should suppose that so stringent v. State, 33 Ind. 201. See Matter of a provision would, in some of these Boyle, 9 Wis. 264. A constitutional cases, lead to the passage of general provision that requires all laws of a laws of doubtful utility in order to general nature to have uniform operremedy the hardships of particular ation throughout the State is comcases; but the constitution adopted plied with in a statute applicable to in 1875 is still more restrictive. Art. all cities of a certain class having less 4, § 53. As to when a general law than one hundred thousand inhabican be made applicable, see Thomas tants, though in fact there be but one v. Board of Commissioners, 5 Ind. 4; city in the State of that class. Welker State v. Squires, 26 Iowa, 340; John- v. Potter, 18 Ohio, N. s. 85. See son v. Railroad Co., 23 Ill. 202. In further, Bourland v. Hildreth, 26 Cal. State v. Hitchcock, 1 Kan. 178, it 162; Brooks v. Hyde, 37 Cal. 366; was held that the constitutional pro- McAurich v. Mississippi, &c. R. R. vision, that "in all cases where a Co., 20 Iowa, 338; Rice v. State, general law can be made applicable, 3 Kan. 141; Jackson v. Shawl, 29 no special law shall be enacted," left Cal. 267; Gentile v. State, 29 Ind. a discretion with the legislature to 409; State v. Parkinson, 5 Nev. 15; determine the cases in which special Ensworth v. Albin, 46 Mo. 450; laws should be passed. See to the People v. Wallace, 70 Ill. 680. So same effect Gentile v. State, 29 Ind. where the legislature, for urgent rea409, and Marks v. Trustees of Pardue sons, may suspend the rules and allow University, 37 Ind. 163; State v. a bill to be read twice on the same Tucker, 46 Ind. 355, overruling day, what constitutes a case of urThomas v. Board of Commissioners, gency is a question for the legislative supra. To the same effect is State v. discretion. Hull v. Miller, 4 Neb. 503. County Court of Boone, 50 Mo. 317; 1 Walker v. Cincinnati, 21 Ohio, s. c. 11 Am. Rep. 415; State v. N. s. 14, 41. Robbins, 51 Mo. 82; Hall v. Bray, individuals. It has control of the public moneys, and should provide for disbursing them only for public purposes. Taxes should only be levied for those purposes which properly constitute a public burden. But what is for the public good, and what are public purposes, and what does properly constitute a public burden, are questions which the legislature must decide upon its own judgment, and in respect to which it is vested with a large discretion which cannot be controlled by the courts, except, perhaps, where its action is clearly evasive, and where, under pretence of a lawful authority, it has assumed to exercise one that is unlawful. Where the power which is exercised is legislative in its character, the courts can enforce only those limitations which the constitution imposes; not those implied restrictions which, resting in theory only, the people have been satisfied to leave to the judgment, patriotism, and sense of justice of their representatives.1 1 State v. McCann, 21 Ohio St. 211, 212. [*130] *CHAPTER VI. OF THE ENACTMENT OF LAWS. WHEN the supreme power of a country is wielded by a single man, or by a single body of men, any discussion in the courts of the rules which should be observed in the enactment of laws must generally be without practical value, and in fact impertinent; for, whenever the unfettered sovereign power of any country expresses its will in the promulgation of a rule of law, the expression must be conclusive, though proper and suitable forms may have been wholly omitted in declaring it. It is a necessary attribute of sovereignty that the expressed will of the sovereign is law; and while we may question and cross-question the words employed, to make certain of the real meaning, and may hesitate and doubt concerning it, yet, when the intent is made out, it must govern, and it is idle to talk of forms that should have surrounded the expression, but do not. But when the legislative power of a State is to be exercised by a department composed of two branches, or, as in most of the American States, of three branches, and these branches have their several duties marked out and prescribed by the law to which they owe their origin, and which provides for the exercise of their powers in certain modes and under certain forms, there are other questions to arise than those of the mere intent of the law-makers, and sometimes forms become of the last importance. For in such case not only is it important that the will of the law-makers be clearly expressed, but it is also essential that it be expressed in due form of law; since nothing becomes law simply and solely because men who possess the legislative power will that it shall be, unless they express their determination to that effect, in the mode pointed out by the instrument which invests them with the power, and under all the forms which that instrument has rendered essential. And if, when the con 1 A bill becomes a law only when made necessary by the constitution to it has gone through all the forms give it validity. Jones v. Hutchinson, stitution was adopted, there were known and settled rules and usages, forming a part of the law of the country, in reference to which the constitution has evidently been framed, and these rules and usages required the observance of particular forms, the constitution itself must also be understood as requiring them, because in assuming their existence, and being * framed [* 131] with reference to them, it has in effect adopted them as a part of itself, as much as if they were expressly incorporated in its provisions. Where, for an instance, the legislative power is to be exercised by two houses, and by settled and well-understood parliamentary law, these two houses are to hold separate sessions for their deliberations, and the determination of the one upon a proposed law is to be submitted to the separate determination of the other, the constitution, in providing for two houses, has evidently spoken in reference to this settled custom, incorporating it as a rule of constitutional interpretation; so that it would require no prohibitory clause to forbid the two houses from combining in one, and jointly enacting laws by the vote of a majority of all. All those rules which are of the essentials of law-making must be observed and followed; and it is only the customary rules of order and routine, such as in every deliberative body are always understood to be under its control, and subject to constant change at its will, that the constitution can be understood to have left as matters of discretion, to be established, modified, or abolished by the bodies for whose government in non-essential matters they exist. Of the two Houses of the Legislature.1 In the enactment of laws the two houses of the legislature are of equal importance, dignity, and power, and the steps which 43 Ala. 721; State v. Platt, 2 S. C. N. s. 150; s. c. 16 Am. Rep. 647; People v. Commissioners of Highways, 54 N. Y. 276; Moody v. State, 48 Ala. 115; s. c. 17 Am. Rep. 28; Legg v. Annapolis, 42 Md. 303. 1 The wisdom of a division of the legislative department has been demonstrated by the leading writers on constitutional law, as well as by general experience. See De Lolme, Const. of |