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enrolled bill. County of San Mateo v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co., 8 Sawyer, 238, 294.

A case very much in point is Ex parte Wren, 63 Mississippi, 512, 527, 532. The validity of a certain act was there questioned on the ground that, although signed by the presiding officers of the two houses of the legislature, and approved by the governor, it was not law, because it appeared from the journals of those bodies, kept in pursuance of the constitution, that the original bill, having passed the house, was sent to the Senate, which passed it with numerous amendments, in all of which the house concurred; but the bill, as approved by the governor, did not contain certain amendments which bore directly upon the issues in the case before the court. The court, in a vigorous opinion delivered by Mr. Justice Campbell, held that the enrolled act, signed by the President of the Senate, and the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the governor is the sole exposition of its contents, and the conclusive evidence of its existence according to its purport, and that it is not allowable to look further to discover the history of the act or ascertain its provisions. After a careful analysis of the adjudged cases the court said: "Every other view subordinates the legislature and disregards that coequal position in our system of the three departments of government. If the validity of every act published as law is to be tested by examining its history, as shown by the journals of the two houses of the legislature, there will be an amount of litigation, difficulty and painful uncertainty appalling in its contemplation, and multiplying a hundredfold the alleged uncertainty of the law. Every suit before every court, where the validity of a statute may be called in question as affecting the right of a litigant, will be in the nature of an appeal or writ of error or bill of review for errors apparent on the face of the legislative records, and the journals must be explored to determine if some contradiction does not exist between the journals and the bill signed by the presiding officers of the two houses. What is the law to be declared by the court? It must inform itself as best it can what is the law. If it may go beyond the enrolled and signed bill and try its validity by

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the record contained in the journals, it must perform this task as often as called on, and every court must do it. A justice of the peace must do it, for he has as much right, and is as much bound to preserve the constitution and declare and apply the law as any other court, and we will have the spectacle of examination of journals by justices of the peace, and statutes declared to be not law as the result of their journalistic history, and the Circuit and Chancery Courts will be constantly engaged in like manner, and this court, on appeal, have often to try the correctness of the determination of the court below, as to the conclusion to be drawn from the legis lative journals on the inquiry as to the validity of the statutes thus tested. .. Let the courts accept as statutes, duly enacted, such bills as are delivered by the legislature as their acts authenticated as such in the prescribed mode."

In Weeks v. Smith, 81 Maine, 538, 547 it was said: "Legislative journals are made amid the confusion of a despatch of business, and, therefore, much more likely to contain errors than the certificates of the presiding officers are to be untrue. Moreover public policy requires that the enrolled statutes of our State, fair upon their faces, should not be put in question after the public have given faith to their validity. No man should be required to hunt through the journals of a legislature to determine whether a statute, properly certified by the speaker of the house and the president of the senate and approved by the governor, is a statute or not. The enrolled act, if a public law, and the original, if a private act, have always been held in England to be records of the highest order, and, if they carry no 'death wounds' in themselves, to be absolute verity, and of themselves conclusive."

To the same general effect are Brodnax v. Commissioners, 64 Nor. Car. 244, 248; State of Nevada v. Swift, 10 Nevada, 176; Evans v. Browne, 30 Indiana, 514; Edgar v. Randolph County Com'rs, 70 Indiana, 331, 338; Pacific Railroad v. The Governor, 23 Missouri, 353, 362 et seq.; Louisiana Lottery Co. v. Richoux, 23 La. Ann. 743. There are cases in other state courts which proceed upon opposite grounds from those we have indicated as proper. But it will be found, upon

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examination, that many of them rested upon constitutional or statutory provisions of a peculiar character, which, expressly, or by necessary implication, required or authorized the court to go behind the enrolled act when the question was, whether the act, as authenticated and deposited in the proper office, was duly passed by the legislature. This is particularly the case in reference to the decisions in Illinois. Spangler v. Jacoby, 14 Illinois, 297; Turley v. County of Logan, 17 Illinois, 151; Prescott v. Canal Trustees, 19 Illinois, 324; Supervisors v. People, 25 Illinois, 181; Ryan v. Lynch, 68 Illinois, 160; People v. Barnes, 35 Illinois, 121. In the last-named case it was said: "Were it not for the somewhat peculiar provision of our Constitution, which requires that all bills before they can become laws shall be read three several times in each house, and shall be passed by a vote of a majority of all the members-elect, a bill thus signed and approved would be conclusive of its validity and binding force as a law. According to the theory of our legislation, when a bill has become a law, there must be record evidence of every material requirement, from its introduction until it becomes a law. And this evidence is found upon the journals of the two houses." But the court added: "We are not, however, prepared to say that a different rule might not have subserved the public interest equally well, leaving the legislature and the executive to guard the public interest in this regard, or to become responsible for its neglect."

The case of Gardner v. The Collector, 6 Wall. 499, 511, was relied on in argument as supporting the contention of the appellants.

The question there was as to the time when an act of Congress took effect; the doubt, upon that point, arising from the fact that the month and day, but not the year, of the approval of the act by the President appeared upon the enrolled act in the custody of the Department of State. This omission, it was held, could be supplied in support of the act from the legislative journals. It was said by the court: "We are of opinion, therefore, on principle as well as authority, that whenever a question arises in a court of law of the existence of a statute,

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or of the time when a statute took effect, or of the precise terms of a statute, the judges who are called upon to decide it have a right to resort to any source of information which in its nature is capable of conveying to the judicial mind a clear and satisfactory answer to such question; always seeking first for that which in its nature is most appropriate, unless the positive law has enacted a different rule." There was no question in that case as to the existence or terms of a statute, and the point in judgment was that the time when an admitted statute took effect, not appearing from the enrolled act, could be shown by the legislative journals. It is scarcely necessary to say that that case does not meet the question here presented.

Nor do the cases of South Ottawa v. Perkins, 94 U. S. 260; Walnut v. Wade, 103 U. S. 683; and Post v. Supervisors, 105 U. S. 667, proceed upon any ground inconsistent with the views we have expressed. In each of those cases it was held that the question whether a seeming act of the legisla ture became a law in accordance with the Constitution, was a judicial one, to be decided by the courts and judges, and not a question of fact to be tried by a jury; and without considering the question on principle, this court held, in deference to the decisions of the Supreme Court of Illinois, interpreting the constitution of that State, that it was competent for the court, in determining the validity of an enrolled act, to consult the legislative journals.

Some reliance was also placed by appellants upon section 895 of the Revised Statutes, providing that "extracts from the journals of the Senate, or of the House of Representatives, and of the Executive Journal of the Senate when the injunction of secrecy is removed, certified by the secretary of the Senate or by the clerk of the House of Representatives, shall be admitted as evidence in the courts of the United States, and shall have the same force and effect as the originals would have if produced and authenticated in court." But referring now only to matters which the Constitution does not require to be entered on the journals, it is clear that this is not a statutory declaration that the journals are the highest evidence of the

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facts stated in them, or complete evidence of all that occurs in the progress of business in the respective houses; much less that the authentication of an enrolled bill, by the official signatures of the presiding officers of the two houses and of the President, as an act which has passed Congress, and been approved by the President, may be overcome by what the journal of either house shows or fails to show.

We are of opinion, for the reasons stated, that it is not competent for the appellants to show, from the journals of either house, from the reports of committees or from other documents printed by authority of Congress, that the enrolled bill designated H. R. 9416, as finally passed, contained a section that does not appear in the enrolled act in the custody of the State Department.

Second. The third section of the act of October 1st, 1890, c. 1244, § 3, is in these words:

"SEC. 3. That with a view to secure reciprocal trade with countries producing the following articles, and for this purpose, on and after the first day of January, eighteen hundred and ninety-two, whenever, and so often as the President shall be satisfied that the government of any country producing and exporting sugars, molasses, coffee, tea and hides, raw and uncured, or any of such articles, imposes duties or other exactions upon the agricultural or other products of the United States, which in view of the free introduction of such sugar, molasses, coffee, tea and hides into the United States he may deem to be reciprocally unequal and unreasonable, he shall have the power and it shall be his duty to suspend, by proclamation to that effect, the provisions of this act relating to the free introduction of such sugar, molasses, coffee, tea and hides, the production of such country, for such time as he shall deem just, and in such case and during such suspension duties shall be levied, collected and paid upon sugar, molasses, coffee, tea and hides, the product of or exported from such designated country as follows, namely:

"All sugars not above number thirteen Dutch standard in color shall pay duty on their polariscopic tests as follows, namely: