The requirement of the Constitution of Illinois that "no private
or local law which may be passed by the General Assembly shall
embrace more than one subject, and that shall be expressed in the
title," is satisfied if the law has but one general object, and
that object is expressed in the title and the body of the act is
germane to the title.
A statute of Illinois which was entitled "An Act to amend the
articles of association of the Danville &c. Railroad Company,
and to extend the powers of and confer a charter upon the same,"
and which, in the body of the act, authorized incorporated
townships along the route to subscribe to its capital stock on an
assenting vote of a majority of the legal voters, and further
legalized assents of voters of certain townships given at meetings
held previous to the passage of the act, complied with the
requirement of the constitution of that state that "No private or
local law which may be passed by the General Assembly shall embrace
more than one subject, and that shall be expressed in the
title."
Page 117 U. S. 509
Anderson v. Santa Anna, 116 U.
S. 366, affirmed.
Schuyler County v. Rock Island & Alton Railroad
Co., 25 Ill. 182, and
O'Leary v. Cook County, 28 Ill.
543, approved and applied.
Welch v. Post 99 Ill. 474, questioned.
The case is stated in the opinion of the Court.
MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WAITE delivered the opinion of the Court.
The facts of this case are identical with those of
Anderson
v. Santa Anna, 116 U. S. 356,
except that here the bonds were issued by one township on the line
of the Danville, Urbana, Bloomington & Pekin Railroad, and
there, by another. The bonds in the two cases are the same in form,
and the statutory authority for their issue the same. All questions
actually decided in the other case are concluded in this, but one
point is made now that was not presented then, and it arises on
these facts:
Art. 3, § 23, of the Illinois Constitution of 1848, which was in
force when the statutes on which the case depends were passed,
contained this provision:
"And no private or local law which may be passed by the General
Assembly shall embrace more than one subject, and that shall be
expressed in the title."
The act of 1867, under which the bonds were issued, was a
private or local law, with the following title:
"An act to amend the articles of association of the Danville,
Urbana, Bloomington & Pekin Railroad Company, and to extend the
powers of, and confer a charter upon, the same."
The parts of the act pertinent to the present inquiry are §§ 1,
12, and 13. These are as follows:
"§ 1.
Be it enacted by the people of the State of Illinois,
represented in the General Assembly, that the said corporation
is hereby created a body politic and corporate under the name and
style of the 'Danville, Urbana, Bloomington and Pekin
Page 117 U. S. 510
Railroad Company,' &c., and the said company is authorized
and empowered to locate, construct, and complete a railroad,
extending from the City of Pekin, in Tazewell County, Illinois,
through, or as near as practicable, to the Towns of Tremont,
Mackinawtown, Concord, Bloomington, Leroy, Mount Pleasant, Mahomet,
Champaign City, Urbana, and St. Joseph, to the east boundary of the
State of Illinois,"
&c.
"§ 12. To further aid in the construction of said road by said
company, any incorporated town or township in counties acting under
the township organization law, along the route of said road, may
subscribe to the capital stock of said company in any sum not
exceeding two hundred and fifty thousand dollars."
"§ 13. No such subscription shall be made until the question has
been submitted to the legal voters of such incorporation, town, or
township in which the subscription is proposed to be made, and the
clerk of each of said towns or townships is hereby required, upon
the presentation of a petition signed by at least ten citizens, who
are legal voters and taxpayers of such town or township for which
he is clerk, and in which petition the amount proposed to be
subscribed shall be stated, to post up notices in at least three
public places in each town or township; which notice shall be
posted not less than thirty days before the day of holding of such
election, notifying the legal voters of such town or township to
meet at the usual place of holding elections in such town or
township, or some other convenient place named in such notice, for
the purpose of voting for or against such subscription,
provided that where elections may have already been held,
and a majority of the legal voters of any township or incorporated
town were in favor of a subscription to said railroad, then, and in
that case, no other election need be had, and the amount so voted
for shall be subscribed as in this act provided. And such elections
are hereby declared to be legal and valid, as though this act had
been in force at the time thereof, and all the provisions hereof
had been complied with."
The point now made is that the statute, so far as it undertakes
to authorize municipalities to subscribe to the capital stock
Page 117 U. S. 511
of the corporation, is unconstitutional because it embraces two
distinct subjects -- one the incorporation of the railroad company
and the other an enlargement of the corporate powers of municipal
corporations -- the first of which alone is expressed in the title.
This objection, it seems to us, is fully disposed of by the case of
Supervisors of Schuyler County v. Rock Island & Alton
Railroad Company, 25 Ill. 181, 183, decided by the Supreme
Court of Illinois in 1860. There, the title was "An act to
incorporate the Rock Island & Alton Railroad Company," and the
act, besides incorporating the company, authorized counties to
subscribe to the stock. As to this, the court said, speaking
through Chief Justice Caton:
"We think the title of this act sufficient to embrace the whole
of the law, and that it is a compliance with the constitutional
requirement. All the provisions of the act are appropriately
designed to carry out the object of the corporation. If it was
proper to authorize subscriptions to the stock, it was certainly
proper to enable individuals or counties to subscribe and specify
the terms and conditions on which they might subscribe, and the
mode of making the subscription."
In states where constitutional provisions like that now under
consideration have been decided to be mandatory, and not directory
only, it has generally been held that the requirement is satisfied
if the law has but one general object, and that is clearly
expressed in the title. It is enough if the body of the act is
germane to the title. This is certainly the well established rule
in Illinois, where, as was said by Mr. Justice Breese, dissenting
in
O'Leary v. County of Cook, 28 Ill. 543, decided in
1862, the "court has leaned rather in favor of the validity of
private acts, when the subjects of the acts are multifarious." In
that case, a provision in a law entitled "An act to amend an act
entitled
An act to incorporate the Northwestern University,'"
which prohibited "the sale of spirituous liquors within four miles
of the university, under a special penalty to be recovered by the
County of Cook," was held by a majority of the court not to be
repugnant to this provision of the Constitution, and it was said
(page 538):
"The object of the charter was to create an institution for the
education of young men, and it was
Page 117 U. S. 512
competent for the legislature to embrace within it every thing
which was designed to facilitate that object. Every provision which
was intended to promote the wellbeing of the institution, or its
students, was within the proper subject matter of the law."
As early as 1853 it was decided in
Belleville &c.
Railroad Company v. Gregory, 15 Ill. 29, that in "An act to
incorporate the Belleville and Illinoistown Railroad Company,"
authority could be given the company "to extend and unite with any
other railroad in this state." So too, in
Firemen's Benevolent
Association v. Lounsbury, 21 Ill. 511, it was held in 1859
that, in a law entitled "An act to incorporate the Firemen's
Benevolent Association and for other purposes," it was competent to
provide that the agents of all foreign insurance companies doing
business in Chicago should pay the association two dollars on
everyone hundred dollars of premiums received by them during a
year, the court simply remarking on this branch of the case:
"We think the sixth section germane to the objects of the bill,
and embraced properly in the same subject, the whole of which is
sufficiently expressed in the title."
P. 515. The same general principle has been fully recognized and
enforced in
Neifing v. Town of Pontiac, 56 Ill. 172;
People v. Wright, 70 Ill. 396;
People v. Brislin,
80 Ill. 423, where it was said, p. 433:
"This Court has gone very far to uphold statutes supposed to be
within this objection; . . . the body of the act in question is
germane to the title of the bill."
Guild v. City of Chicago, 82 Ill. 475;
Fuller v.
People, 92 Ill. 185. This Court also decided to the same
effect in
Jonesboro City v. Cairo & St. Louis Railroad
Co., 110 U. S. 199,
as to a similar provision in the Illinois Constitution of 1870.
It is further insisted, however, that if this law is good so far
as the general authority to subscribe is concerned, it is bad to
the extent that it seeks to give effect to elections which were
unauthorized at the time they were held, and we are referred to the
cases of
Village of Lockport v. Gaylord, 61 Ill. 276, and
Middleport v. Aetna Life Ins. Co., 82 Ill. 562, in support
of this position. In
Lockport v. Gaylord, it was decided
that a provision legalizing certain appropriations theretofore
made
Page 117 U. S. 513
by the president and trustees of the village, and certain orders
drawn by the clerk, was not germane to the title of "An act to
amend the charter of the Village of Lockport," passed February 12,
1853, and in
Middleport v. Aetna Ins. Co. that authority
to issue bonds in liquidation of appropriations voted under a prior
act was not germane to the title of "An act to legalize certain
aids heretofore voted and granted to aid in the construction" of a
proposed railroad. The first of these cases was decided in 1871,
and the last in 1876. In the present case, however, the provision
relates only to the terms and conditions on which subscription to
the stock of the railroad company might be made, which it was said,
in
Supervisors of Schuyler County v. Rock Island & Alton
Railroad Co., was germane to the general subject of a bill to
incorporate a railroad company. It is nothing more nor less than a
requirement of a vote of the people as authority for the
subscription, with a proviso that if the vote had already been
taken it need not be taken over again. This, as it seems to us,
comes within both the letter and spirit of the earlier
adjudications, and that these have not been overthrown by the later
cases. We are aware that in
Welch v. Post 99 Ill. 474,
decided in 1881, the court said that, "on the authority of
Middleport v. Aetna Ins. Co.," it was "inclined to hold" that power
could not be given to municipal corporations to subscribe to the
stock of a railroad company in an act entitled substantially like
that now under consideration; but as neither in this case, nor in
that of
Middleport v. Insurance Co., nor in that of
Lockport v. Gaylord, was any reference whatever made to
the earlier decisions, which seem to be so decidedly the other way,
we do not feel ourselves called upon to depart from the long
settled practice in the state by what has yet been done toward
making a change. In fact, in
Fuller v. People, before
cited, which was decided eight years after the
Lockport
case, and three years after that of
Middleport, the
following quotation is made with approval from Cooley on
Constitutional Limitations (1st ed.) 144, § 2:
"The general purpose of these provisions is accomplished when a
law has but one general object which is fairly indicated by its
title. To require every end and means necessary
Page 117 U. S. 514
or convenient for the accomplishment of this general object to
be provided for by a separate act relating to that alone would not
only be unreasonable, but would actually render legislation
impossible."
And again, from
Sun Mut. Ins. Co. v. Mayor 8 N.Y.
253:
"There must be but one subject, but the mode in which the
subject is treated, or the reasons which influenced the
legislation, could not and need not be stated in the title,
according to the letter and spirit of the Constitution."
In
Montclair v. Ramsdell, 107 U.
S. 147;
Otoe County v. Baldwin, 111 U.
S. 16, and
Ackley School District v. Hall,
113 U. S. 135, we
had occasion to consider the same general question, with the same
result, in connection with similar provisions in the constitutions
of New Jersey, Nebraska, and Iowa, respectively.
Finding nothing in this case to distinguish it from
Anderson
v. Santa Anna, the judgment is, on that authority,
Affirmed.